evil that it has a strange power of deceiving a man as to its real
character; like the cuttle-fish, that squirts out a cloud of ink and so
escapes in the darkness and the dirt. The more a man goes wrong the less
he knows it. Conscience is loudest when it is least needed, and most
silent when most required.

Then, besides that, there is a great part of every one's life which is
mechanical, instinctive, and all but involuntary. Habits and emotions
and passing impulses very seldom come into men's consciousness, and an
enormously large proportion of everybody's life is done with the minimum
of attention, and is as little remembered as it is observed.

Then, besides that, conscience wants educating. You see that on a large
scale, for instance, in the history of the slow progress which Christian
principle has made in leavening the world's thinkings. It took eighteen
centuries to teach the Church that slavery was unchristian. The Church
has not yet learned that war is unchristian, and it is only beginning to
surmise that possibly Christian principle may have something to say in
social questions, and in the determination, for example, of the
relations of capital and labour, and of wealth and poverty. The very
same slowness of apprehension and gradual growth in the education of
conscience, and in the perception of the application of Christian
principles to duty, applies to the individual as to the Church.

Then, besides that, we are all biassed in our own favour, and what, when
another man says it, is 'flat blasphemy,' we think, when we say it, is
only 'a choleric word.' We have fine names for our own vices, and ugly
ones for the very same vices in other people. David will flare up into
generous and sincere indignation about the man that stole the poor man's
ewe lamb, but he has not the ghost of a notion that he has been doing