Thoreau's individual consciousness was a very faint reflection of an ancestral consciousness of the presence of sin, and of moral obligations of an intensity almost inconceivable in these degenerate days. There was a time in a Cape Cod community when corporal punishment was inflicted on all residents who denied the Scriptures, and all persons who stood outside the meeting-house during the time of divine service were set in the stocks. The way of righteousness was not a straight and narrow path, but a macadamized thoroughfare, and woe to the man who ventured on a by-path! One is not surprised to learn that "hysteric fits" were very common, and that congregations were often thrown into the utmost confusion; for the preaching was far from quieting. "Some think sinning ends with this life," said a well-known preacher, "but it is a mistake. The creature is held under an everlasting law; the damned increase in sin in hell. Possibly, the mention of this may please thee. But, remember, there shall be no pleasant sins there; no eating, drinking, singing, dancing; wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen waters; but damned sins, bitter, hellish sins; sins exasperated by torments; cursing God, spite, rage, and blasphemy. The guilt of all thy sins shall be laid upon thy soul, and be made so many heaps of fuel.... He damns sinners heaps upon heaps." It is not surprising to learn that as a result of such preaching the hearers were several times greatly alarmed, and "on one occasion a comparatively innocent young man was frightened nearly out of his wits." One wonders in what precise sense the word "comparatively" was used; it is certain that those who had this sense of the sinfulness of things driven into them were too thoroughly frightened to see the world with the poet's eye. In Sicily nobody was concerned for the safety of his soul; nobody was aware that he had a soul to be saved. Thoughtful people knew that certain things gave offense to the gods; that you must not flaunt your prosperity after the fashion of some American millionaires, who have discovered in recent years that there is a basis of fact for the Greek feeling that it is wise to hold great possessions modestly; that certain family and state relations are sacred, and that the fate of Œdipus was a warning: but nobody was making observations of his own frame of mind; there were no thermometers to take the spiritual temperature.