‘Perhaps because he is very anxious to love him first-hand, and what you tell him about God does not seem to him to be good. Surely neither man nor woman can love because of what seems not good! I confess one may love in spite of what is bad, but it must be because of other things that are good.’ She was silent. ‘However goodness may change its forms,’ I went on, ‘it must still be goodness; only if we are to adore it, we must see something of what it is--of itself. And the goodness we cannot see, the eternal goodness, high above us as the heavens are above the earth, must still be a goodness that includes, absorbs, elevates, purifies all our goodness, not tramples upon it and calls it wickedness. For if not such, then we have nothing in common with God, and what we call goodness is not of God. He has not even ordered it; or, if he has, he has ordered it only to order the contrary afterwards; and there is, in reality, no real goodness--at least in him; and, if not in him, of whom we spring--where then?--and what becomes of ours, poor as it is?’ My reader will see that I had already thought much about these things; although, I suspect, I have now not only expressed them far better than I could have expressed them in conversation, but with a degree of clearness which must be owing to the further continuance of the habit of reflecting on these and cognate subjects. Deep in my mind, however, something like this lay; and in some manner like this I tried to express it. Finding that she continued silent, and that Charley did not appear inclined to renew the contest, anxious also to leave no embarrassing silence to choke the channel now open between us--I mean Mary and myself--I returned to the original question. ‘It seems to me, Charley--and it follows from all we have been saying--that the sin of suicide lies just in this, that it is an utter want of faith in God. I confess I do not see any Other ground on which to condemn it--provided, always, that the man has no other dependent upon him, none for whom he ought to live and work.’ ‘But does a man owe nothing to himself?’ said Clara. ‘Nothing that I know of,’ I replied. ‘I am under no obligation to myself. How can I divide myself, and say that the one-half of me is indebted to the other? To my mind, it is a mere fiction of speech.’ ‘But whence, then, should such a fiction arise?’ objected Charley, willing, perhaps, to defend Clara. ‘From the dim sense of a real obligation, I suspect--the object of which is mistaken. I suspect it really springs from our relation to the unknown God, so vaguely felt that a false form is readily accepted for its embodiment by a being who, in ignorance of its nature, is yet aware of its presence. I mean that what seems an obligation to self is in reality a dimly apprehended duty--an obligation to the unknown God, and not to self, in which lies no causing, therefore no obligating power.’ ‘But why say _the unknown God_, Mr Cumbermede?’ asked Mary.