However calm the outer surface of their lives may seem, under the surface there is a continual discord; and also, though they alone may perceive it, a continued decadence.

In various degrees they all yield to temptation; all men in the vigour of their manhood do; and conscience still fills them with its old monitions and reproaches.

But it cannot enforce obedience.

They feel it to be the truth, but at the same time they know it to be a lie; and though they long to be coerced by it, they find it cannot coerce them.

Reason, which was once its minister, is now the tribune of their passions, and forbids them, in times of passion, to submit to it.