ought you wouldn't like it.' Do
you think the father would be particularly pleased?

(VIOLET _is silent._)

He would answer, would he not, if he were wise and good, 'My boy, though
you had no father, you must not rob tills'? And nothing is ever done so
as really to please our Great Father, unless we would also have done it,
though we had had no Father to know of it.

VIOLET (_after long pause_). But, then, what continual threatenings, and
promises of reward there are!

L. And how vain both! with the Jews, and with all of us. But the fact
is, that the threat and promise are simply statements of the Divine law,
and of its consequences. The fact is truly told you,--make what use you
may of it: and as collateral warning, or encouragement, or comfort, the
knowledge of future consequences may often be helpful to us; but helpful
chiefly to the better state when we can act without reference to them.
And there's no measuring the poisoned influence of that notion of future
reward on the mind of Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the
monastic system rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and
ambition of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies
and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of pride, to
begin with, in what is called 'giving one's self to God.' As if one had
ever belonged to anybody else!

DORA. But, surely, great good has come out of the monastic system--our
books,--our sciences--all saved by the monks?

L. Saved from what, my dear? From the abyss of misery and ruin which
that false Christianity allowed the whole active world to live in. When
it had become the principal amusement, and the most admired art, of
Christian men, to cut one another's throats, and burn one another's
towns; of course the few feeble or reasonable persons left, who desired
quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got into cloisters; and the
gentlest, thoughtfullest, noblest men and women shut themselves up,
precisely where they could be of least use. They are very fine things,
for us painters, now,--the towers and white arches upon the tops of the
rocks; always in places where it takes a day's climbing to get at them;
but the intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is
unspeakable. All the good people of the world getting themselves hung up
out of the way of mischief, like Bailie Nicol Jarvie;--poor little
lambs, as it were, dangling there for the sign of the Golden Fleece; or