It is implied in the language of all who profess to regard morality, that whether the guilty person be conscious or no of any remorse or sorrow, the same harm has been done by what we call guilt.
There is, however (and this brings us to the third point), a very large part of the world that, as a fact, no matter what it professes, really sets upon morality no true value whatever.

If it has ever realised at all what morality is, it has done so only partially; it has been more impressed with its drawbacks than with its attractions, and it becomes practically happier and more contented, the more it forgets the very idea of virtue.

But it is implied, as we have seen, in the usual language of all of us that, let the vicious be as happy as possible, they have no right to such a happiness, and that if they choose to take it, it will in some way or other be the worse for them.

This language evidently implies farther that there is some standard by which happiness is to be measured, quite apart from its completeness, and from our individual desire for it.

That standard is something absolute, beyond and above the taste of any single man or of any body of men.