Stand up, foolish maiden, and listen; and know, in one word, that sin, for which the spirit of man is punished with the vengeance of heaven, lieth not in the corporal act, but in the thought of the sinner. Believe, lovely Phoebe, that to the pure all acts are pure, and that sin is in our thought, not in our actions, even as the radiance of the day is dark to a blind man but seen and enjoyed by him whose eyes receive it. To him who is but a novice in the things of the spirit much is enjoined, much is prohibited; and he is fed with milk fit for babes--for him are ordinances, prohibitions, and commands. But the saint is above all these ordinances and restraints. To him, as to the chosen child of the house, is given the pass-key to open all locks which withhold him from the enjoyment of his heart's desire. Into such pleasant paths will I guide thee, lovely Phoebe, as shall unite in joy, in innocent freedom, pleasures which, to the unprivileged, are sinful and prohibited. So when a journalist with no strong original predisposition to swear to his own hurt shall have gained high public distinction by his fertility in falsehoods for consumption by an enemy in the field, the fishes that tipple in the deep may well "know no such liberty" as this expert in fiction will allow himself when restored to his own more intoxicating element. The general addition of prestige to the controversial device of giving false impressions and raising false issues would naturally be immense. To argue any case merely on its merits and on the facts would seem to the admirers of the new way a kind of virtuous imbecility. In what great industrial dispute or political campaign, in what struggle between great financial interests, would both sides, or either, forego the use of munitions so formidable? Such conflicts might almost wholly cease to be competitions in serious argument at all; they might become merely trials of skill in fantastic false pretences, and of expertness in the morbid psychology of credulity.