"With the result," continued Lord Henry emphatically, "that the moment the belief in the personal god declines, as on analysis it must decline, morality declines with it. For morality in such cases is bound up, as you say, with the belief in a personal god. Civilisation, in fact, is once again on the rocks and society is no longer safe--why? Because by making your moral code issue from the lips of your personal god, it has become so much waste paper now that your personal god is beginning to be felt as an absurdity. Thus in a religion with a personal god, heresy always kills two birds with one stone. But once the bird morality is killed, it takes a new civilisation and a new culture to hatch another one. Man can survive without a belief in a personal god; he cannot survive without a morality." "But a personal god," objected Denis, "is omniscient, all-seeing. He is assumed to know all men's actions, and they dare not do wrong precisely because they know he is watching them. That surely is the best safeguard to decent conduct; it is in fact the meaning of conscience!" "Yes, I was coming to that point," said Lord Henry gravely, "and what is the outcome of the thousands of years of belief in this omniscient god, who can see all men's action? Why, sir, whoever you are," Lord Henry exclaimed, his voice swelling with indignation, "the result is that to-day things have come to such a pass that it is scarcely possible to trust one man or woman in the whole of these islands to do the right thing against their own interests, when your god, and your god alone is their witness. That is the state to which your belief in an omniscient personal god has reduced us, and you know that what I say is true." The Incandescent Gerald was so jubilant that he wished to laugh outright; but his keen eager wife prevented him. She had no wish to save the feelings of her husband's tormentor, but she was too much fascinated and spellbound by what she had been able to divine of Lord Henry's personality to brook the coarse interruption. Leonetta and Vanessa were beginning to be conscious of this feeling too, and stared eagerly through the darkness to try to catch a glimpse of the powerful stranger. "People have got so used to violating even the most elementary principles of savage morality," continued Lord Henry, "without the thunder of your almighty descending on their heads, that there is scarcely a man or woman in Europe to-day who really fears your god as their only witness, who really troubles about your god as their only witness, or who even gives him a passing thought, when they stand absolutely alone before the temptation to perpetrate some mean, despicable or dishonourable action." Lord Henry was at his best. His words were uttered with extreme precision, his manner was emphatic and passionate, and his mysterious presence in the party only magnified the impression that these characteristics made upon his listeners.