ces absolutely incompatible with any life outside a
hermitage or a monastery. It would strike at the root of all
civilisation, and although many may be prepared to give it their formal
assent, no human being actually believes it with the kind of belief
that becomes a guiding influence in life. I have dwelt on this subject
in another book, and may here repeat a few lines which I then wrote. If
'an undoubted sin, even the most trivial, is a thing in its essence and
its consequences so unspeakably dreadful that rather than it should be
committed it would be better that any amount of calamity which did not
bring with it sin should be endured, even that the whole human race
should perish in agonies, it is manifest that the supreme object of
humanity should be sinlessness, and it is equally manifest that the
means to this end is the absolute suppression of the desires. To expand
the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply temptations and therefore
to increase the number of sins.' No material and intellectual
advantages, no increase of human happiness, no mitigation of the
suffering or dreariness of human life can, according to this theory, be
other than an evil if it adds even in the smallest degree or in the most
incidental manner to the sins that are committed. 'A sovereign, when
calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect that a single sin
occasioned by that war, a single blasphemy of a wounded soldier, the
robbery of a single hen-coop, the violation of the purity of a single
woman is a greater calamity than the ruin of the entire commerce of his
nation, the loss of her most precious provinces, the destruction of all
her power. He must believe that the evil of the increase of unchastity
which invariably results from the formation of an army is an
immeasurably greater calamity than any national or political disasters
that army can possibly avert. He must believe that the most fearful
plagues and famines that desolate his land should be regarded as a
matter of rejoicing if they have but the feeblest and most transient
influence in repressing vice. He must believe that if the agglomeration
of his people in great cities adds but one to the number of their sins,
no possible intellectual or material advantages can prevent the
construction of cities being a fearful calamity. According to this
principle every elaboration of life, every amusement that brings
multitudes together, almost every art, every accession of wealt