The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

Chapter 7: The sense of sin
Concerning the sense of sin we have already in
Chapter I had occasion to say something, but we
must now go into it more fully, since it is one of the
most important of the underlying psychological
causes of unhappiness in adult life. There is a
traditional religious psychology of sin which no
modern psychologist can accept. It was supposed,
especially by Protestants, that conscience reveals
to every man when an act to which he is tempted is
sinful, and that after committing such an act he may
experience either of two painful feelings, one
called remorse, in which there is no merit, and the
other called repentance, which is capable of
wiping out his guilt. In Protestant countries even
many of those who lost their faith continued for a
time to accept with greater or smaller
modifications the orthodox view of sin. In our own
day, partly owing to psycho-analysis, we have the
opposite state of affairs: not only do the
unorthodox reject the old doctrine of sin, but many
of those who still consider themselves orthodox do