Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person, his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his aptitude for affairs, won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one of the noblest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautiful youth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautiful young tiger. Tito had no conscience toward Romola, no conscience toward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward the patriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitor toward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautiful body; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; and so conscience becomes an avenger upon Tito. When the keystone goes from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour when conscience first drove Tito into the Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannot afford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is God's avenger. Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three of the seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world's greatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. The masterpieces of Sophocles and Æschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Göethe and Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed, hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting him into the open sky. Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, is conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose it to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and there is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty, testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when God made man, He implanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of inner mind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty. It includes many faculties, and is complex in nature. It has an intellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable of education. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill aged persons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appease the gods. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in institutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and skillfully done, it won honor--a condition of things that still prevails in some sections.