Belief in majorities is not rooted in my breast, and if all the world were against me the fact might warn me to revise and criticise my opinions, but would not in itself supply a ghost of a reason for forsaking them. For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at. CCCLXVIII Moral duty consists in the observance of those rules of conduct which contribute to the welfare of society, and by implication, of the individuals who compose it. The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are discoverable--like the other so-called laws of Nature--by observation and experiment, and only in that way. Some thousands of years of such experience have led to the generalisations, that stealing and murder, for example, are inconsistent with the ends of society. There is no more doubt that they are so than that unsupported stones tend to fall. The man who steals or murders, breaks his implied contract with society, and forfeits all protection. He becomes an outlaw, to be dealt with as any other feral creature. Criminal law indicates the ways which have proved most convenient for dealing with him. All this would be true if men had no "moral sense" at all, just as there are rules of perspective which must be strictly observed by a draughtsman, and are quite independent of his having any artistic sense. CCCLXIX The moral sense is a very complex affair--dependent in part upon associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed), which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are totally devoid of it--just as some children draw, or are enchanted by music while mere infants, while others do not know "Cherry Ripe" from "Rule Britannia," nor can represent the form of the simplest thing to the end of their lives. Now for this last sort of people there is no reason why they should discharge any moral duty, except from fear of punishment in all its grades, from mere disapprobation to hanging, and the duty of society is to see that they live under wholesome fear of such punishment short, sharp, and decisive. For the people with a keen innate sense of moral beauty there is no need of any other motive. What they want is knowledge of the things they may do and must leave undone, if the welfare of society is to be attained. Good people so often forget this that some of them occasionally require hanging almost as much as the bad.