No fear of giving pain, no wish to soothe the alarms of
those to whom we owe much, no respect for the natural clinging of the
old to the faith which has accompanied them through honourable lives,
can warrant us in saying that we believe to be true what we are
convinced is false. The most lax moralist counts a lie wrong, even when
the motive is unselfish, and springs from the desire to give pleasure to
those whom it is our duty to please. A deliberate lie avowedly does not
cease to be one because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the less
wrong because it is uttered by one to whom all spiritual things have
become indifferent. Filial affection is a motive which would, if any
motive could, remove some of the taint of meanness with which pious
lying, like every other kind of lying, tends to infect character. The
motive may no doubt ennoble the act, though the act remains in the
category of forbidden things. But the motive of these complaisant
assents and false affirmations, taken at their very best, is still
comparatively a poor motive. No real elevation of spirit is possible for
a man who is willing to subordinate his convictions to his domestic
affections, and to bring himself to a habit of viewing falsehood
lightly, lest the truth should shock the illegitimate and over-exacting
sensibilities either of his parents or any one else. We may understand
what is meant by the logic of the feelings, and accept it as the proper
corrective for a too intense egoism. But when the logic of the feelings
is invoked to substitute the egoism of the family for the slightly
narrower egoism of the individual, it can hardly be more than a fine
name for self-indulgence and a callous indifference to all the largest
human interests.

This brings us to consider the case of another no less momentous
relationship, and the kind of compromise in the matter of religious
conformity which it justifies or imposes. It constantly happens that the
husband has wholly ceased to believe the religion to which his wife
clings with unshaken faith. We need not enter into the causes why women
remain in bondage to opinions which so many cultivated men either reject
or else hold in a transcendental and non-natural sense. The only
question with which we are concerned is the amount of free assertion of
his own convictions which a man should claim and practise, when he knows
that such convictions are distasteful to his wife. Is it lawful, as it
seems to be in de