On the other hand, we
will hardly question that numbers of people of coarser nature have been
deterred from evil-doing by dread of supernatural punishment. It is,
however, notorious in the moral history of Europe that these religious
beliefs have been consistent with a vast amount of transgression of the
decalogue: more than we witness in any civilised country in our own
time. How, then, are we to discover what were the real springs of
conduct in the mass of ordinarily decent people? It seems to me that the
only accurate method is to avoid theories and consider people in the
flesh. Do our Christian friends--did we ourselves in Christian
days--refrain from lying, dishonesty, injustice, cruelty, and injury,
solely or mainly because God forbids them or will punish them? I have
not met the man, except in the imaginative pages of religious
controversy, who confessed that he would stoop freely to these things if
there were no Christian prohibition. The mainspring of ordinary decent
conduct in any educated community has always been a perception of its
human and social value.
The only line of the decalogue about which there is likely to be any
dispute in this regard is that putting restraint on sexual relations.
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