indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing
is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed
in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had
as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that _nothing is evil_.[152] The
members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with
equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and
smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of
murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact
reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of
which it is easy to speculate.

When man casts a vague glance over the world, extinguishing the while
the inner light of conscience; when he resigns himself to the things he
contemplates without applying to them any standard, what first strikes
his attention, as we have said before, is success. And what next?
Scandal. Nothing comes more into view than scandal. In a vast city,
thousands of young men gain their livelihood laboriously, and devote
themselves to the good of their families: no one speaks of them. A
libertine loses other men's money at play, and blows out his brains: all
the city knows it. Honest women live in retirement; the king's
mistresses form the subject of general conversation. Crime and baseness
hide themselves; but up to the limits of what the world calls infamy,
evil delights in putting itself forward, because _éclat_ and noise
supply the means of deadening the conscience; while, as regards the
grand instincts of charity, it has been well said that--"the obscure
acts of devotedness are the most magnificent." The poor and wretched
shed tears in obscurity over benefits done secretly, while folly loves
to display its glittering spangles, and shakes its bells in the public
squares. There is in each one of us more evil than we think; but there
is in the world more good than is commonly known. There are concealed