These are not the things which one would simply dislike
others to know that one has done. One might fear the condemnation of
others, even though one did not believe that a particular act was in
itself wrong; because of the misunderstandings and vexation and grief
and derision that the knowledge of one's action might create. To take
an absurd instance, a man might think it pleasant and even beneficial
to sit or walk naked in the open air; but it would not be worth his
while to do it, because he would be thought eccentric and indecent.
There would be people who would condemn it as immoral; but it is not
our duty, unless we believe it to be so, to convert others to a simpler
kind of morality in wholly indifferent matters.
The sort of offences for which conscience condemns one, but to which no
legal penalty is attached, are things like petty cruelty, unnecessary
harshness, unkindness, introducing innocent people to evil thoughts and
ideas, disillusioning others, disappointing them. A man may do these
things and not only not be thought the worse of for them, but may
actually be thought the better of, as a person of spirit and manliness;
but if for any motive whatever, or even out of the strange duality of
nature that besets us, he yields to these things, then he is living by
the light of conventional morality and quenching his inner light, as
deliberately as if he blew out for mere wantonness a lantern in a dark
and precipitous place.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70