h, that
awakens or stimulates desires is an evil, for all these become the
sources of some sins, and their advantages are for the most part purely
terrestrial.'

Considerations of this kind, if duly realised, bring out clearly the
insincerity and the unreality of much of our professed belief. Hardly
any sane man would desire to suppress Bank Holidays simply because they
are the occasion of a considerable number of cases of drunkenness which
would not otherwise have taken place. No humane legislator would
hesitate to suppress them if they produced an equal number of deaths or
other great physical calamities. This manner of measuring the relative
importance of things is not incompatible with a general acknowledgment
of the fact that there are many amusements which produce an amount of
moral evil that overbalances their advantages as sources of pleasure, or
of the great truth that the moral is the higher and ought to be the
ruling part of our being. But the realities of life cannot be measured
by rigid theological formulae. Life is a scene in which different kinds
of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree
counterbalance one another, and it can only be carried on by constant
compromises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly
marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether
absorb or override the others. We have to deal with good principles that
cannot be pushed to their full logical results; with varying standards
which cannot be brought under inflexible law.

Take, for example, the many untruths which the conventional courtesies
of Society prescribe. Some of these are so purely matter of phraseology
that they deceive no one. Others chiefly serve the purpose of courteous
concealment, as when they enable us to refuse a request or to decline an
invitation or a visit without disclosing whether disinclination or
inability is the cause. Then there are falsehoods for useful purposes.
Few men would shrink from a falsehood which was the only means of saving
a patient from a shock which would probably produce his death. No one, I
suppose, would hesitate to deceive a criminal if by no other means he
could prevent him from accomplishing a crime. There are also cases of
the suppression of what we believe to be true, and of tacit or open
acquiescence in what we believe to be false, when a full and truthful
disclosure of our own beliefs might destroy the happiness of others, or
su