If many have been unable to keep the sweet moral confidence of childhood until the end, it is because riper experience has not confirmed to them Antigone’s premises, nor mature reflection born out her conclusions. Do they _not_ die, these unwritten laws: are new ones, indeed, never born? For a little searching we may find that not a precept marks a virtue for one people at one time, but that elsewhere or elsewhen its ordinance is taken to be vicious. And conversely, we do not have to travel far to find vice turning into virtue. Antigone’s own people are not so remote from us as the Mingrelians and Topinamboues; we owe them much that we prize most in our culture, and would be proud to match them in more ways than one. And yet, consider their admiration in the way of a man, which, if it was any one, was surely the Wise Ulysses. Now, if there are any two principles of Christian morals more firmly planted in our souls than others, they are the maxims, Be truthful, and, Be kind. But was Ulysses truthful? was Ulysses kind? To leave for one’s unconquered enemies a wooden horse as it were a parting token may be an innocent enough thing to do, however pagan. But to make of this wooden horse a disguised troop ship is not within the strict letter of truthfulness; and to sally forth therefrom to slay your quondam foes while they sleep in the security of your peace does not show a kindly spirit. Yet it does not appear that the Greek gods resented any more than did the Greek people Ulysses’ cruel craft: all of which would lead one to suspect that the unwritten law of peoples, if indeed it come from Heaven, must come from only that part of it which is directly overhead at the time. But let time and place be never so circumscribed, and men never so in accord as to their moral maxims, are these maxims at least consistent with one another? Does one bid us be truthful?--then another bids us be kind! But how in this vale of perplexities is one always to be truthful yet never unkind? “Yes I know,” writes an old gossip of mine and fellow philosopher, “I know. Morality; Duty. But how hard it is to discover what is duty! I assure you that for three quarters of my time I do not know where duty lies. It is like the hedgehog that belonged to our English governess at Joinville. We used to spend the evening looking for it under the furniture, and when we had found it, it was time to go to bed.”[15]