as a courtier; one is greater as the result of what one does one’s self only, or attempts to do, and not as the result of what one endeavours to obtain from a master. [Sidenote: Arguments for its utility equally good for auricular confession.] Will the individual never be able to do without prayers conceived as a constant communication with God, as a daily confession, a faith in Him and before Him? He will probably not renounce it until he is capable of existing without it. Arguments to prove the practical utility of prayer, conceived as a direct communication with one’s living ideal, would all hold equally good in favour of Catholic confession before the priest as a realization of the moral ideal. Nevertheless, when Protestants suppressed the confession they gave a fresh development to moral austerity: the morality of Protestant peoples, which is defended only by the voice of conscience, is not inferior to that of Catholic peoples.[65] Is it any more necessary for the purpose of ascertaining one’s faults and curing them to kneel before a personified and anthropomorphic God than before a priest beneath the roof of a church? Experience alone can decide, and a number of men seem already successfully to have tried the experiment. The scrutiny of a philosophical conscience has been proved to be sufficient. [65] See below chapter iv. [Sidenote: Prayer as a subjective relief.] Finally it has been said that prayer, even conceived as destitute of objective effect, nevertheless justifies itself by the comfort it affords; one has attempted to argue in its favour on purely subjective grounds, but prayer runs the risk precisely of losing its power as a consoler the instant one ceases to believe in its objective efficiency. If nobody hears us, who will continue to offer up petitions simply to ease the burden of his own heart? If the orator is uplifted by the sympathy of the assembly which listens to him, does it follow that he will experience the same effect if he deliver his oration in the void with the knowledge that his thought, his word, his emotion, are lost, and spend themselves in space? [Sidenote: Subjective charity the durable element in prayer.]