Immorality

“ This abuse touches life; not life in its being, but in its source, in the principle that makes all vitality possible, which is still more serious. Immorality is therefore a moral poisoning of the wells of life. ”

“ There will be, I say, in spite of you, unbelief and immorality to the end of the world, and you must be prepared for immorality more odious, and unbelief more astute, more subtle, more bitter, and more resentful, in proportion as it is obliged to dissemble. ”

“ That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality. ”

“ A mistake, therefore, of right may become a species of immorality; ”

“ The most contradictory theories are even now brought forward and actively spread abroad, and in the course of this unavoidable growth of the mental faculties, the necessity or expediency, the wisdom or the guilt, of what is called ordinary immorality must finally be brought before the highest court of public opinion—i.e., the enlightened conscience of men and women. ”

“ That certain blunders hurt us more than our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them is like our remorse for venial immorality, only more intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark. You ride using another man’s season-ticket, or you tell a white lie, or speak an unkind word, and conscience, if a little used to such things, never winces. ”

“ There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it. ”

“ I am sure that a just consideration of both these furnishes every one with very cogent inducements to make what opposition they can to Immorality, both by amending their own faults, and by indeavouring to prevail upon others to correct whatever has contributed to the making us a vicious People. ”

“ It is the terrible attribute of this sort of mischief, however, that it is at once cause and effect. Peril to life, of this particular kind, generates the immorality which, in its turn, creates the recklessness which again imperils life. ”

“ In reality it is far less prejudicial to witness the immorality of the great than to witness that immorality which leads to greatness. ”

“ Restrain yourself, therefore, from all iniquity, and do that which is good." "What, sir," say I, "are the evil deeds from which we must restrain ourselves?" "Hear," says he: "from adultery and fornication, from unlawful revelling, from wicked luxury, from indulgence in many kinds of food and the extravagance of riches, and from boastfulness, and haughtiness, and insolence, and lies, and backbiting, and hypocrisy, from the remembrance of wrong, and from all slander. These are the deeds that are most wicked in the life of men. ”

“ But what, now, is the state of that man's mind—the man of the world whom we have described? Is it not a kingdom of darkness rather than of light? a kingdom of Evil rather than of God? There, in the centre, sits enthroned, as it were, the master-passion, Self-love, selfishness. Around it are gathered various bad passions and evil propensities and habits,—Avarice, Fraud, Cunning, Pride, Contempt, Malice, Rage, Revenge;—and beyond, in the outskirts, the servitor, Hypocrisy, striving to throw his broad cloak over the whole, and hide them from the general view. ”

“ To attain felicity, is it necessary that we believe in contradictions? Must we deem cruelty one of the attributes of divinity? Must the benevolent mind be called to the view of murder, in order to be fitted for the performance of its essential duties? Must injustice and revenge be interwoven with the morality of man? Shall we never be permitted to love truth, admire nature, and practice a pure and genuine morality? Oh, superstition! how much thou hast to answer for! thine influence has corrupted the faculties of man, debased his heart, and rendered wretched the whole human race. ”

“ The argument, in the foregoing part of our discussion (in which we showed that morality is grounded in an antagonism carried on between our nature and our consciousness,) is obviously founded on the assumption that man is born in weakness and depravity. We need hardly, now-a-days, insist on the natural sinfulness of the human heart, which we are told by our own, and by all recorded experience, as well as by a higher authority than that of man, is desperately wicked, and runneth to evil continually. ”

“ You, like the Cameleon, can put on any colour, can turn vice into virtue, and virtue into vice, to deceive your masters; and under the specious pretence of religion can commit the greatest barbarities. But tho’ under the shelter of that reverend name, you think all your iniquities undiscovered, so you possess your prince with the abominable zeal of persecution; yet heaven sees and detests your hypocrisy, and even men at long-run, discover the cheat. Oh! ye unworthy enemies of virtue, whose only aim is to raise your own fortunes upon the ruin of others. How useful are you to the Devil? ”

“ Think in this way, I pray you, of every form of sin and of every immoral practice, which spring from the intrigues of evil, gaining over the will of the mind to worldly desires and to the deceit and pleasure of the flesh. In this way every bad deed comes about, adultery and theft, covetousness and drunkenness, love of money and vain glory, envy and self-assertion, and every other bad practice that you can name. Sometimes actions that appear good are performed for the sake of the glory and praise of men ”

“ How could there be an evil act which did not proceed from an antecedent evil principle or disposition? What becomes of the great common notion of mankind, on which his demonstration is erected? But we must allow the author to contradict himself, since he has now come around to the truth, that an evil act of the creature may and must have preceded the existence of moral evil in the world. ”

“ And of course, and we shall all confess it, if these notions are as false as he supposes them, and we have no power to be anything but what we are, there neither is nor can be such a thing as moral evil; and what we call crimes will no more involve a violation of the will of God, they will no more impair his moral attributes if we suppose him to have willed them, than the same actions, whether of lust, ferocity, or cruelty, in the inferior animals. ”

“ In the language of contemporary youth, it will not be decent. [1] That substitution of the word decency for the word virtue gives, methinks, the clue to the future revaluation of our moral standards. It implies, as I have suggested, a more intelligent and, in some ways, more indulgent, morality; but a morality on the whole more austere, a stark notion of duty armed with the relentless imperative which nowadays makes us abashed at the revelation in ourself of physical cowardice or bodily dirtiness. ”

“ That which our feelings incline us to think evil, is not so in reality, and in itself, unless it is made so through our fault. For from thee, O Lord, proceed all things, whether life or death, honour or poverty; how, then, can they be evil, when they proceed from the Highest Good? These, however, become evil, not unfrequently, through our fault, that is to say, through our impatience, cowardice, and mistrust. Strengthen us, then, with thy grace and comfort, and make all things work together for good to those that love thee. ”

“ In my Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men, I have endeavoured to expose a second great evil, namely, hypocrisy; the bane of all virtue, morality, and goodness; and to arm, as well as I can, the honest, undesigning, open-hearted man, who is generally the prey of this monster, against it. I believe a little reflection will convince us, that most mischiefs (especially those which fall on the worthiest part of mankind) owe their original to this detestable vice. ”

“ Now of this evil impulse I do not say, looking at it objectively: “It is somehow a part of the universal good;” but, in the moment of moral action I make it, even in the very moment of its sinfulness, a part of my good consciousness, in overcoming it. The moral insight condemns the evil that it experiences; and in condemning and conquering this evil it forms and is, together with the evil, the organic total that constitutes the good will. Only through this inner victory over the evil that is experienced as a conquered tendency does the good will have its being. ”

“ In former days it was—"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." What is the fruit of the spirit of evil? Envy, malice, hatred, evil-speaking, lying and slandering one another and towards other people. ”

“ “Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons! ”

“ And these wrong actions, in the avoidance of which duty consists, are usually such as produce, very immediately, some bad consequence in pain to others; while, in many prominent instances, the inclination, which prompts us to them, is itself an intrinsic evil, containing, as where the impulse is lust or cruelty, an anticipatory enjoyment of something evil or ugly. That right action does thus so frequently entail the suppression of some evil impulse, is necessary to explain the plausibility of the view that virtue consists in the control of passion by reason. ”

“ But what renders your injustice toward the pious still more cruel, is, that it is your own examples, your irregularities, and even your censures, which stagger, weaken, and force them sometimes to imitate you; it is the corruption of your manners which becomes the continual and the most dangerous snare to their innocence; it is those foolish derisions with which you continually assault virtue, that force them reluctantly to shelter themselves under the appearances of guilt. ”

“ How true a thing is it of the human heart, and alas! how pitiful a thing, that use has such wondrous power over it, whether for good or for evil; but mostly—perhaps because such is its original nature—unto evil. ”

“ You exaggerate their weaknesses, and you make a crime to them of the slightest imperfections; and that is an inhumanity. You turn even their zeal and fervour into ridicule; and that is an impiety. And behold, my brethren, the three descriptions of the world's injustice toward the pious: — an injustice of temerity, which always suspects their intentions; an injustice of inhumanity, which gives no palliation to the slightest imperfections; an injustice of impiety, which, of their zeal and sanctity, makes a subject of contempt and derision. ”

“ Are we responsible for what we cannot help? I could not condemn any one but myself. The existence of evil is true, but how horrible! And how it spoils our lives.”
“Spoils our lives,” he repeated. “You are quite right! Tell me, can a man or a woman love two people at once? Is it possible to love evil and good?” ”

“ The follies and the vices, the weariness and the sadness, the discontent and the moroseness of life, all spring from the want of a just conception of its relations and its value, such as can be attained only by calm, deliberate reflection, out of which wise opinions evolve, and are gradually shaped into a creed such as forms the bone and muscle of a wise and noble Character.
Evil is ever the result of the abuse of some good; for nothing was created evil. ”

“ We hold that every wrong act we commit, if it does not destroy our happiness at the time, and operate as a barbed arrow sticking in the soul, will at least weaken our capacity for happiness in the future, weaken our moral strength and resolution to abstain from crime, weaken our natural detestation of crime, and weaken our moral ability to resist the temptation to commit the same and other crimes in the future, and finally destroy our moral manhood and true dignity. ”

“ How simple also the solution of the problem of evil! “If I want to do evil, I cannot,” said the objector; “for God the perfect one includes me with the rest, and so cannot in his perfection be hurt by me. Let me do what I will, my act can only seem bad, and cannot be bad. All evil is illusion, hence there is no moral difference in action possible.” ”

“ And so it degrades a soul to bow down where it ought [p. 715] to stand erect and firm, and a man who will from cowardice or any other cause cringe before a moral fool is a man who is of no use in the world from a moral point of view. (See on this subject, on verse 26 of the preceding chapter, page 711.) 2. It injures the man who receives it. It makes him feel as if there was no difference between vice and virtue, when he finds himself receiving that which ought to be given to a good man only, and so he is confirmed in his wickedness. ”

“ There you have a proof of the weakness of its strength to reform a people, and of the charm of its power to corrupt them. Indeed, Sir, it requires a high degree of moral corruption as the basis of its exhibitions, for it will be found that its performers, and its admirers, are alike strangers to that elevated moral purity, which brings the human spirit to some degree of resemblance to the immaculate sanctity of the Divine nature. ”

“ But, as we before said, we are persuaded that these things are prompted by evil spirits, who demand sacrifices and service even from those who live unreasonably; but as for you, we presume that you who aim at [a reputation for] piety and philosophy will do nothing unreasonable. But if you also, like the foolish, prefer custom to truth, do what you have power to do. ”

“ Not to return evil for good.—Here we rise, in some respect, a degree in the moral scale. The two inferior degrees, namely, ingratitude and cruelty, have always and everywhere been considered as crimes. Nowhere has it ever been considered allowable to do harm to those who have done us good. But in nearly all societies, at a certain degree of civilization, has it been considered allowable, and even praiseworthy, to return evil for evil. ”

“ For in the world of our own acts we have a wondrous experience. We realize evil, we fight it, and, at the same time, we realize our fragment of the perfect divine life in the moment itself of struggling with the evil. And in this wondrous experience lies the whole solution of the ancient problem of the existence of moral evil. For instance, I find in myself a selfish impulse, trying to destroy the moral insight. ”