314 ESSAYS AND LETTERS
bad in his own activity and in that of others, and knowing also why one thing is good and another is bad — when he sees a contradiction between the de- mands of reason and his own or other men^s actions, will employ the whole force of his reason to find means to destroy these contradictions by learning how best to bring his actions into agreement with the demands of his reason. But a man without religion — who has no standard whereby to judge the quality of actions apart from the pleasure they afford him — yielding to the sway of his feelings (which are most various and often contradictory), involuntarily falls into contradictions ; and, having fallen into contradictions, tries to solve or hide them by arguments more or less elaborate and clever, but always untruthful. And therefore, while the reasoning of truly religious men is always simple, direct, and truthful, the mental activity of men who lack religion becomes particularly subtle, complex, and insincere.
I will take the most common example : that of a man who is addicted to vice — that is, is not chaste, not faithful to his wife, or, being unmarried, indulges in vice. If he is a religious man, he knows that this is wrong, and all the efforts of his reason are directed to finding means to free himself from his vice : avoiding intercourse with adulterers and adulteresses, increasing the amount of his work, arranging a strict life for him- self, not allowing himself to look on a woman as on an object of desire, and so forth. And all this is very simple, and everyone can understand it. But if the incontinent man is not religious, he at once begins to devise all sorts of explanations to prove that falling in love with women is very good. And then we get all sorts of most complex, cunning, and subtle considera- tions about the affinity of souls, about beauty, about the freedom of love, etc. ; and the more these spread, the more they darken the question and hide the essential truth.
Among those who lack religion, the same thing happens in all spheres of activity and of thought. To
