and whose age, position, and circumstances secure them from strong
temptation. To see the real work of positive thought we must go to
younger men, whose characters are less formed, whose careers are still
before them, and on whom temptation of all kinds has stronger hold. We
shall find such men with the sense of virtue equally vivid in them, and
the desire to practise it probably far more passionate; but the effect
of positive thought on them we shall see to be very different.

Now, the positive school itself will say that such men have all they
need. They confessedly have conscience left to them--the supernatural
moral judgment, that is, as applied to themselves--which has been
analysed, but not destroyed; and the position of which, we are told, has
been changed only by its being set on a foundation of fact, instead of a
foundation of superstition. Mill said that having learnt what the sunset
clouds were made of, he still found that he admired them as much as
ever; '_therefore_,' he said, '_I saw at once that there was nothing to
be feared from analysis_.' And this is exactly what the positive school
say of conscience. A shallower falsehood, however, it is not easy to
conceive. It is true that conscience in one way may, for a time at
least, survive any kind of analysis. It may continue, with undiminished
distinctness, its old approvals and menaces. But that alone is nothing
at all to the point. Conscience is of practical value, not only because
it says certain things, but because it says them, as we think, with
authority. If its authority goes, and its advice continues, it may
indeed molest, but it will no longer direct us. Now, though the voice of
conscience may, as the positive school say, survive their analysis of
it, its authority will not. That authority has always taken the form of
a menace, as well as of an approval; and the menace at any rate, upon
all positive principles, is nothing but big words that can break no
bones. As soon as we realise it to be but this, its effect must cease