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Ecclesiastical authors have made everything hinge on the conversion of Constantine and the national establishment of Christianity. The medium through which they look distorts the position of objects, and magnifies the subordinate and the collateral into the chief. Events had been gradually shaping themselves in such a way that the political fall of the city of Rome was inevitable.
A beautiful soul, housed in a beautiful body, and supplied with all the external advantages necessary to produce and perpetuate such a combination that is the Greek conception of well-being; and it is because labour with the hands or at the desk distorts or impairs the body, and the petty cares of a calling pursued for bread pervert the soul, that so strong a contempt was felt by the Greeks for manual labour and trade.
Luxury meanwhile distorts our whole attitude to our fellows, and in every effort to excel and shine we wrong the labouring millions. Aristocracy involves general degradation, and can survive only amid general ignorance. "To make men serfs and villeins it is indispensably necessary to make them brutes.... A servant who has been taught to write and read, ceases to be any longer a passive machine."
There are stages of civilisation in which the dream world blends so closely with the world of realities, in which the imagination so habitually and so spontaneously transfigures or distorts, that men become almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the fictitious.
"You see," resumed he suddenly, "to what miserable, detailed inquiries I have descended, I who always had a horror of espionage, as of some terrible degradation. I shall question you frankly, for you are my friend. And what a friend! I intended to use artifice with you at first, but I was ashamed. Passion takes possession of me and distorts me.
But when anyone distorts this so as to read that the economic factor is the sole element he converts the statement into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase.
More cruel than the clumsy torturing weapons of old, it distorts, and scars, and hacks, and maims, and destroys its victim inch by inch, feature by feature, member by member, joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving him to cumber the earth and tell the horrid tale of a living death, till there is nothing left of him.
But you perhaps think yourself sane because you are not confined within doors, but follow the promptings of your madness whithersoever it lead you: and yet compare your frenzy with that of Thallus; you will find that there is but little to choose between you, save that Thallus confines his frenzy to himself, while you direct yours against others; Thallus distorts his eyes, you distort the truth; Thallus contracts his hands convulsively, you not less convulsively contract with your advocates; Thallus dashes himself against the pavement, you dash yourself against the judgement-seat.
"Every time a meeting is convened at the Wauxhall to consider how the amount of female starvation or misery may be reduced, the philosopher throws his window open again, and grins while he caricatures, or rather distorts and exaggerates to positive untruth. M. Gill gets fresh food. The chroniqueurs invent a series of absurdities, which didn't happen yesterday, as they allege.
Well, that is malice that distorts and rends your heart as often as you meet that man on the street or even pass by his door. That is malice that dances in your eyes when you see his name in print. That is malice with which you always break out when his name is mentioned in conversation.
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