Every religion with more or less success—and none with more success than Christianity—in centuries past helped law and public opinion to regulate this most important part of morality. They all made a sacred thing of an oath, which is nothing but a covenant which every individual enters into with himself to speak the truth, even when he could lie with impunity or with advantage to himself. They all created a sexual morality to regulate love, marriage, and the family. They endeavoured in various ways to awaken in the consciences of the rich and powerful the recognition of certain duties of moderation and charity towards the weak and the poor. Nowadays, on the contrary, men no longer have time to examine their consciences, or to reflect on their own vices and defects, or on their own duties and rights. The whole atmosphere of our lives is exterior to ourselves; we are always moving about and always busy. We have become almost incapable of meditation and self-introspection. Our times no longer lay any store by this education of our inner feelings. The only discipline they impose on man is that of work. Everybody, whether of high degree or of low, is required, under penalty of losing his daily bread or of dropping in the social scale, to fill with exactness, precision, diligence, and correctness, the rôle, be it little or big, which has been allotted to him in the immense operations of our times. But, for the rest, everyone is to-day much more free than he was in the past to adjust his line of action to his own beliefs, and to make for himself his own standard and his own laws.