To give a few exemplifications.--A man of gentle temper, educated in the fear of God and the love of man, who becomes a soldier, the first time he has to take deliberate aim at human life will hardly do it without a strong pang of conscience. So, at least, it was with me. Nevertheless it is his duty; a duty which may be justified on higher, although worldly grounds; so long at least as mankind are not further advanced than they now are. In like manner, he who after a long struggle forswears the religion of his fathers--the daily repeated lesson of his youth,--and embraces another on full conviction that it is better, will generally feel a slight, but difficultly subdued inquietude; and it is with that, just as it is with the most absurd fear of ghosts in those who have been educated in the belief of ghosts. They have a _ghost-conscience_, which they cannot get rid of. Nay, even more; with irritable characters, the mere persuasion that others hold them guilty of an evil action will give them so much the feeling of an evil conscience, that it appears in all its usual outward signs--embarrassment, blushing, and turning pale. This may be carried so far as to lead to insanity. For instance: A man universally believed to have killed another, or one who really, though quite innocently, has killed another, may never enjoy a moment's tranquillity or happiness again. We even read of a Bramin, whose religious creed makes the murder of an insect as criminal as that of a man, who killed himself because an English 'savant' told him that he never drank a glass of water without destroying thousands of invisible creatures. 'Il n'y a qu'un pas du sublime au ridicule.'