To believe we were upright, pure, and benevolent would be as good as to be so.

We might have all the pleasures of morality with none of its inconveniences; for it is easy, if I may borrow a phrase of Mr.Tennyson's, to become _so false that we take ourselves for true_; and thus, tested by any pain or joy that we ourselves were conscious of, the results of the completest falsehood would be the same as those of the completest virtue.
But let a man be never so perfect an instance of a result like this, no positivist moralist would contend that he was virtuous, or that he could be said, at his death, to have found the true treasure of life.

On the contrary his career would be regarded as, in the profoundest sense, a tragedy.

It is for this reason that such a value is set at present upon feminine purity, and that we are accustomed to call the woman ruined that has lost it.

The outer harm done may not be great, and may lead to no ill consequences.