And if it be again said that a morality of this kind, which rests on a principle and a mental attitude only, is a danger, let us pause for a moment to consider how much more dangerous is one which rests on formulæ. If morality without a code is a serious matter, how much more serious is one which is nailed up _within_ a code! For looking back on history it would sometimes seem that the black-and-white, the this-thing-right-and-that-thing-wrong morality has been the most wicked thing in the world. It has been an excuse for all the most devilish deeds and persecutions imaginable. A formula of the Sabbath-day, a formula about Witchcraft, a formula of Marriage (regardless of the real human relation), a formula concerning Theft (regardless of the dire need of the thief)--and burnings, hangings, torturings without mercy! The terrible thing about this Right-and-Wrong morality is not only that it leads to these dreadful reprisals; but that it brands upon the victim as well as upon the oppressor the fatuous notions that a certain _thing_ is right or wrong, and that what one has to do is to save _oneself_--two notions both of which are directly contrary to true Morality. A boy tells a verbal lie--perhaps through fear, perhaps through inadvertence. He has broken a formula and is immediately caned. Moral: he will keep to verbal truth afterwards--however mean or insidious it may be--and be pharisaically self-satisfied; but he will never realise that the importance of truth and lies rests not in the words, but in the confidence and mutual trust which they either create or destroy. The peculiarly English worship of Duty is open to the same objection. "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," and splendid as is the conception and practice of Duty, as a self-oblivious inspiration and enthusiasm, it becomes a truly revolting thing when it takes the all-too-common form "I have done _my_ Duty, I'm all right!" "I am going to do _my_ Duty, whatever becomes of you." Can anything be imagined more disintegrating to society, more certain to split it up into a dustheap of self-regarding units, than a formula of this kind? "It is my painful Duty to condemn you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead," says the Judge to the wretched girl who, in a frenzy of despair, has drowned her baby. What he really means is that while he perfectly recognises the monstrosity of the Law which he has sworn to administer, and the soul-killing effect on the girl which his sentence may have, yet in order to save _himself_ from the risk or the wrong of breaking that Law, he is willing and ready to pronounce that sentence. "It is my duty to burn you," says the Inquisitor to the heretic; and the implication is really, "I am afraid that if I do not burn you I shall get burnt myself, in the next world."