This searching of the inward parts was not always soothing by any manner of means. For the past century and a half, numerous writers and philosophers have denounced it as one of the refinements of torture with which religion in the past made men’s lives a burden to them. Perhaps, however, they are wrong; for this effort, which religion made for so many centuries to habituate man to self-introspection, self-knowledge, and self-judgment, demands a less superficial explanation. However great be the force of the laws and the vigilance of public opinion, there can be no convenient order in a social system, if man does not help by exercising some sort of surveillance over himself, if he does not give ear to an inward voice, forbidding him to take advantage of every opportunity of doing evil with impunity which may offer itself. This necessity for self-restraint is particularly urgent in connection with three duties: the duty of speaking the truth, the duty of checking one’s own inclination to pleasure, especially in the relations between the sexes, and the duty of not using one’s own strength improperly at the expense of the weak. Many are the times when we could tell a lie with impunity, or even with advantage to ourselves, if we wished to do so; and yet it is necessary that we should speak the truth spontaneously, in order that justice may triumph. How easy it is for the man who has become the slave of vice to evade the eyes of his fellows and to satisfy in secret his most perverse passions! And what system of laws can be conceived which will be wise and perfect enough to bar all the countless ways in which the stronger can impose upon the weaker?