from its primitive source. Listen: Placed in the alternative of either
renouncing his mission or dying, it is thus that Socrates addresses his
judges: "Athenians, I honor you and I love you, but I will obey the
Deity rather than you. My whole occupation is to persuade you, young and
old, that before the care of the body and of riches, before every other
care, is that of the soul and of its improvement. Know that this it is
which the Deity prescribes to me, and I am persuaded that there can be
nothing more advantageous to the republic than my zeal to fulfil the
behest of the Deity."[24] Does the man who speaks in this way appear to
you to have wished to break the link which connects morality with
religion? He separates himself from the established religion; he pursues
with his biting raillery shameful objects of worship; his conscience
protests. But, while it protests, it attaches itself immediately to a
higher and holier idea of that God, of whose perfections the sage of
Athens had succeeded in obtaining a glimpse.

God then is the explanation of the conscience: He is moreover its
support. It has need in sooth to be supported,--that voice which speaks
within us; because it is unceasingly contradicted and denied. The
spectacle which the world presents is not an edifying one; the facts
which are taking place on the earth are not all of a nature to maintain
the steadfastness of the moral feeling. Let us imagine an example, a
striking example, such as it would be easy to find realized on a small
scale in more commonplace events. A peaceable population, menaced in its
most sacred rights, has taken up arms in the simplest and most
legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the
soldiers who are advancing to oppress it--mere instruments as they are
in the hands of their leaders--but upon the leaders themselves. One of
these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to
which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one