influence works through the medium of custom. An atrocious act is at
once felt to be repulsive. What is this but the effect of early
impressions? Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if of
noble birth, will make tremendous sacrifices to perform what he has
promised, motived entirely by the fact that his father has often
earnestly impressed upon him in his childhood that "a man of honor" or
"a gentleman" or a "a cavalier" always keeps his word inviolate.

_Philalethes_. That's no use unless there is a certain inborn
honorableness. You mustn't ascribe to religion what results from innate
goodness of character, by which compassion for the man who would suffer
by his crime keeps a man from committing it. This is the genuine moral
motive, and as such it is independent of all religions.

_Demopheles_. But this is a motive which rarely affects the multitude
unless it assumes a religious aspect. The religious aspect at any rate
strengthens its power for good. Yet without any such natural foundation,
religious motives alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not be
surprised at this in the case of the multitude, when we see that even
people of education pass now and then under the influence, not indeed of
religious motives, which are founded on something which is at least
allegorically true, but of the most absurd superstition, and allow
themselves to be guided by it all their life long; as, for instance,
undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down thirteen at a
table, obeying chance omens, and the like. How much more likely is the
multitude to be guided by such things. You can't form any adequate idea
of the narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place of
absolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, unjust and
malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People in this condition--and
they form the great bulk of humanity--must be led and controlled as well