432 THE REIGN OF LAW. 



sisted in the end, and they are most liable to take 

 erroneous directions when they are resisted long. 

 For this is among the most certain of all the 

 laws of Man's nature — that his conduct will in 

 the main be guided by his moral and intellectual 

 convictions. " All human society is grounded 

 on a system of fundamental opinions." Such is 

 the Law arrived at by the newest of modern 

 Philosophies,* and it would be well if all its 

 discoveries were as near the truth. This is the 

 Law to which Christianity appeals, and in which 

 its very roots are laid, when it asserts as no other 

 Religion has ever asserted the power and virtue of 

 Belief. And in this Law lies the error which those 

 commit who imagine they can hold by the Ethics 

 of Christianity, whilst regarding with comparative 

 indifference its History and its Creed. This, too, 

 is the Law which lends all their importance to the 

 speculations of Philosophy. False conceptions 

 of the truth, in apparently the most distant pro- 

 vinces of Thought, may and do relax the most 

 powerful springs of action. Among these false con- 

 ceptions of the truth, none are now more prevalent 



* The Positive Philosophy of Aug. Comte, by J. S. Mill, p. ioi. 



