18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness. In all her works the accidents of vice are carefully distinguished 

 from the vileness of moral ruin ; what tragedy there may be lies not 

 in audacious crimes that make the fascination of the melodrama, but 

 in the wrecked conscience of him who commits them. It is not long 

 since fiction saw a hero in a murderer, who had at least the merit of 

 boldness ; now the analysis has been carried a step further, and novel- 

 ists acknowledge, what we all know, that there may be evil-doers who 

 are comparatively innocent, but that there is little to be said in behalf 

 of a being sodden with selfishness, even if he do not offend against 

 criminal law. 



This distinction which the novelist draws between crime and wick- 

 edness is one that society itself is making, otherwise the novelist 

 would not perceive it, and the growing interest in the discussion of 

 the subject corresponds with the general increase in the value of the 

 individual. Laws, we may perhaps say, concern masses ; moral cor- 

 ruption is a personal matter that eludes the legislator. The ordinary 

 citizen is law-abiding by nature and education ; he does not consult 

 the statute-book and trim his life in such a way as to avoid the grip 

 of the constable ; the policeman is his ally, not his foe. This altera- 

 tion in men's way of modeling their lives has not been without effect 

 on the position of the Church. Sermons are still preached that are 

 remote from close connection with human interests, but there are many 

 instances of the attemjrt that is making to save religion from the dry- 

 rot of ecclesiasticism. Doctrinal exposition is giving place to simpler 

 explanation of right and wrong, and to aid in the government of life. 



What was once a hierarchy is becoming a democracy. We see a 

 proof of this in the way in which books of casuistry are left stranded 

 for the entertainment of the curious. Society has nothing more to do 

 with those huge folios in which the leaders of the Church tormented 

 themselves to devise possible sins for which they constructed ingenious 

 reproofs. This treatment of the problems of sin reminds us of the 

 barren and intricate exercises of the logicians who were contemporary 

 with the casuists. Nowadays no one dreams of consulting a book to 

 find out how wicked he has been, any more than an orator who wishes 

 to influence his hearers practices with tr, y, and z the skeleton of the 

 syllogism to ascertain how he shall move the feelings of his audience. 

 A man trusts to his conscience, to the sentiments of his neighbors, to 

 tell him what his conduct shall be. The possession of the test of right 

 and wrong has spread from a class to society at large. In the same 

 way, with every year less stress is laid on the cosmogony of the Old 

 Testament, and more on the ethics of the New. It is no longer de- 

 manded that we believe in the literal truth of Genesis, or in the ever- 

 varying reconciliations, as they are called, with which theologians try 

 not to be left behind by modern thought. 



These modifications of ecclesiasticism that is to say, the relaxa- 

 tion of dogmatism coincident with a general comprehension of mo- 



