Our first photograph shows a marble "head" preserved in the Louvre in Paris. About a foot in height, it is a pre-Hellenic era idol from Amorgos, in the Greek archipelago of the Cyclades.

The marvels of the universe should lead man to the knowledge of the wisdom, goodness, and beauty of the Creator of all things. But man, having become pagan, not rarely began to adore beings inferior to himself, such as animals or even horrible imaginary divinities like this head. Were someone with a face like this to walk through the streets, he would cause horror. Were he to get into a taxi or a bus, it would empty out immediately. Were there a disease that caused people to look like this, all the physicians of the world would mobilize against it. We are dealing here with a monster, certainly a very expressive one and thus even more terrible, for it emits only monstrosity.

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How can one not feel compassion for the poor pagans led to adore this monster? How can one not perceive the mental and moral deformation that adoration of a thing like this introduces into the soul??

As regards this, Sacred Scripture wisely observes that men model themselves after the things they love: "I found Israel like grapes in the desert, I saw their fathers like the first fruits of the fig tree in the top thereof: but they went in to Belphegor, and alienated themselves to that confusion, and became abominable, as those things were, which they loved" (Osee 9:10).