says Dr. Tyndall, ’visits the heart of him who is really competent to say, “I court truth."’ It is not, be it observed, the objective attainment of truth that creates the gladness.  It is the subjective desire, the subjective resolution.  The moral end, for the positivist just as much as for the believer, is a certain inward state of the heart, or mind—­a state which will of necessity, if possible, express itself in action, but whose value is not to be measured by the success of that expression.  The battle-ground of good and evil is within us; and the great human event is the issue of the struggle between them.

And this leads us on to the second point.  The language used on all hands respecting this struggle, implies that its issue is of an importance great out of all proportion to our own consciousness of the results of it, nay, even that it is independent of our consciousness.  It is implied that though a man may be quite ignorant of the state of his own heart, and though no one else can so much as guess at it, what that state is is of great and peculiar moment.  If this were not so, and the importance of our inner state had reference only to our own feelings about it, self-deception would be as good as virtue.  To believe we were upright, pure, and benevolent would be as good as to be so.  We might have all the pleasures of morality with none of its inconveniences; for it is easy, if I may borrow a phrase of Mr. Tennyson’s, to become so false that we take ourselves for true; and thus, tested by any pain or joy that we ourselves were conscious of, the results of the completest falsehood would be the same as those of the completest virtue.

But let a man be never so perfect an instance of a result like this, no positivist moralist would contend that he was virtuous, or that he could be said, at his death, to have found the true treasure of life.  On the contrary his career would be regarded as, in the profoundest sense, a tragedy.  It is for this reason that such a value is set at present upon feminine purity, and that we are accustomed to call the woman ruined that has lost it.  The outer harm done may not be great, and may lead to no ill consequences.  The harm is all within:  the tragedy is in the soul itself.  But—­and this is more important still—­even here the harm may not be recognised:  the act in question may lead to no remorse; and yet despite this, the case will be made no better.  On the contrary it will be made a great deal worse.  Any father or husband would recognise this, who was not professedly careless about all moral matters altogether.  It would not, for instance, console a positivist for his daughter’s seduction to know that the matter was hushed up, and that it gave the lady herself no concern whatever.  It is implied in the language of all who profess to regard morality, that whether the guilty person be conscious or no of any remorse or sorrow, the same harm has been done by what we call guilt.