Moral cowardice

“ Question and listen to your conscience, and no matter how keen the ridicule, or severe the condemnation to which your views may subject you, stand firm. Moral cowardice is the inclined plane that leads to the first step in sin. Be sure you are right, and then suffer no persuasion or invective to influence you in questions involving conscientious scruples. You are young and peculiarly isolated, therefore I have given you a letter to my valued old friend Mrs. Mason, who will always advise you judiciously, if you will only consult her. ”

“ It is true, its principal champion worked hard to cover with bullying boisterousness the moral cowardice from which it sprang, but in vain. He mistakes the motive-power which shapes the actions of free nations. Having no moral convictions of his own to stand upon, he could never address himself to the moral sense of the people. ”

“ With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke, and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught at the balustrade,—the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or to be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command, or simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of natural and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown in a noble cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly formidable; for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds of a hypocrite’s cowardice. ”

“ I must confess to prizing manliness so high, that I prefer even brutality to cowardice. There is nothing to me so contemptible in a man or woman as moral weakness, and therefore I prefer even the outrages of strength to the questionable virtues of a weak, yielding, coddling mind. ”

“ We commonly call it moral cowardice. It is originally a weakness rather than a positive sin, and yet it is probably as prolific of sin and even of great crime as any of the more definite and vigorous passions of our nature, such as hate, lust, avarice. It is that weakness which prompts a man to [290] avoid difficulties, to escape everything rough and disagreeable, to yield to circumstances, and which above all makes him incapable of facing the reproach, contempt, or opposition of his fellow-men. ”

“ Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the absence of feeling. ”

“ Duties which relate to the Feelings.
Under this head let me speak first of fear. There is a distinction to be drawn between physical and moral cowardice. Physical cowardice is a matter of temperament or organization. Perhaps it can hardly ever be entirely overcome, but the exhibition of it can be prevented by moral courage. Moral cowardice, on the other hand, is a fault of character. In attempting to formulate the rule of conduct, appeal as before to the egoistic motive, then to the social—i. ”

“ Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the commanding feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000. I am not offering this as a discovery; privately the dullest of us knows it to be true. History will not allow us to forget or ignore this supreme trait of our character. ”

“ The impulse to run away from danger, and the impulse to plunge recklessly into risks, are the two forms of temptation which lead to the more pronounced and prevalent vices.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Yielding to outward pressure, contrary to our own conviction of what is true and right, is moral cowardice.—In early times the coward was the man who turned his back in battle. To-day the coward is the man who does differently when people are looking at him from what he would do if he were alone; the man who speaks what he thinks people want to hear, instead of what he [77] knows to be true ”

“ Will any member of the Society for the Suppression of Moral Indignation step forward and heatedly charge the plain man with culpable foolishness, ignorance, or gullibility; or even with cowardice in neglecting to find a convincing answer to the fundamental question about the other end of his life? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You are wrong, I know and feel, when you advocate the pitiful resources of this corrupt social life, ... and if you are wrong, how are we to get right, we all who look to you for teaching. Are you afraid too of being taken for a coward? or would you excuse that sort of fear ... that cowardice of cowardice, in other men? For me, I value your honour, just as you do ... more than your life ... ”

“ Yet in the latter case we affect to be thrown into greater consternation than at the most unredeemed acts of villany, as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the horror of the deed! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind are in fact shocked at the consequences to themselves (if such examples are held up for imitation,) and they make a fearful outcry against the violation of every principle of morality, lest they too should be called on for any such tremendous sacrifices—lest they in their turn should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra-official duty. ”

“ We surely cannot abandon the unfortunate wretch who through moral impotence—whether it be the craven submissiveness of the coward, or the undaunted violence of the overbearing brute—commits an evil deed. ”

“ For indeed—I know what people are—if everything which is mean, dirty, and evil to-day, were to be declared by you to-morrow upright, pure, and good—all these snouts, without any effort of their own, would to-morrow be upright, pure, and good. One thing only would be necessary—the cowardice to annihilate self within themselves. ”

“ And how happy must it have made us, the parents, to be sure that our children had thus deeply imbibed habits the contrary of cruelty! For, be it engraven on your heart, YOUNG MAN, that, whatever appearances may say to the contrary, cruelty is always accompanied with cowardice, and also with perfidy, when that is called for by the circumstances of the case; and that habitual acts of cruelty to other creatures, will, nine times out of ten, produce, when the power is possessed, cruelty to human beings. ”

“ High cultivation of the imaginative faculty, the habit of living too much within himself, and a constitutional predisposition in that direction, had made him painfully nervous—a weakness which to him, and eventually to others, assumed the shape of cowardice. ”

“ But while we can think and maintain the rights of our own individuality against every human combination, let us not forget to caution all who are disposed to waver that there is a cowardice which is criminal, and a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge. ”

“ There was a presence which could effectually quench the ardor of two pairs of keen eyes, could cause two little faces to blanch to an unwholesome and sickly hue, could cause two little hearts to beat anxiously, and could so affect the moral equilibrium of two very steadfast little souls, that lies would fall glibly from their lips, and the coward's weapons of deceit and subterfuge would be gladly used by them in self-defence. ”

“ The moral coward is he who sacrifices what he believes to be the higher from fear, who sacrifices his inner self to save his skin. If we hold our political rights dear above all else, if we think our manhood involved, let us be ready to give up wealth, comfort, and even life itself in their defense ”

“ Courage is not common, and only wants a benevolent power to direct it to the public good. Cowardice, on the contrary, is a frequent, self-interested, and contagious evil, which can never be improved into a virtue. ”

“ But the miserable folly and puerility of such an altercation as that in which he had just been engaged, the poor display of human character, the little low passions which bad been called up, even in himself, alike destitute of worthy cause and aim, and which had perhaps but just missed ending in the death of some and the living death of others,--it all wrought to bring him back to his old wearying of human nature and despondent eying of the everywhere jarrings, confusions, and discordances in the moral world. ”

“ When all is over, men will do me justice, and that poor fellow will bitterly lament his cowardice. It will be agony to him to remember that one word would have preserved my life then, when no power on earth can recall me to existence. He is not a bad man—and could he now have represented to him his after remorse, he would cease to exhibit such lamentable cowardice—a cowardice, after all, that has its origin in the remnants of good feeling. The fear of shame; horror at having participated in so fearful a tragedy ”

“ To them a few such lessons as you could have given them with a stick from one of their own trees, would have been invaluable."
"I did not know they were cowards!"
"What difference does that make? The man who grounds his action on another's cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.—I fear worse will come of it! ”

“ Their indolence is the result of experience that if they do well, or if they do badly, the result will be nil to them, therefore why should they exert themselves? Their cowardice is the result of the fear of responsibility. They are fallen on so heavily if anything goes wrong. ”

“ You're a coward and a liar, like all your sneaking kind, that skulk about dark corners, and crawl under beds, and arm yourself to the teeth, and stand ready to murder innocent women, to strike them down in the dark, rather than be found out! It's cowardice, the lowest and meanest kind of cowardice! ”

“ I was a moral coward, and he was not losing his life and desires through fear—which the majority of us do. ”

“ I always hated coward souls, And meanness held in scorn. Now, each unworthy act At once through all my senses thrills; Each instance vile of human worthlessness, My soul with holy anger fills. This arrogant, this foolish age, Which feeds itself on empty hopes, Absorbed in trifles, virtue’s enemy, Which idly clamors for utility, And has not sense enough to see How useless all life thenceforth must become, I feel beneath me, and its judgments laugh To scorn. The motley crew, The foes of every lofty thought, Who laugh at thee, I trample under foot. ”

“ That men should act thus and be perfectly unconscious the while that they are acting a cowardly and rascally part,—and that society should not punish them for it by looking upon them as men who have lost their caste, would be surprizing if we did not too plainly see to what a degree the moral sense, not only of individuals but of a whole community, may be corrupted. ”

“ Who does not lament to think of a generous mind placed under circumstances where cowardice is honored and courage debased? And what more melancholy picture of human misery can be imagined than that which is here exhibited of the bodily and mental powers in a state of arrested development from the effects of confinement? ”

“ Why paint a dark and odious disposition which, devoid of all human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy, for the mere purpose of producing domestic discontent and petty embarrassments? ”

“ Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. ”

“ This is cowardice and is called virtue. True, they are at the same time quite ready to attack and injure, but only those who are once for all at their mercy and with whom it is safe to take liberties. ”

“ Only men will not confess this, but give the name of cowardice and of courage to what is neither the one nor the other. In dissipation, in thoughtlessness, in indifference, the poor wretches lose both life and death. ”

“ But such deterioration or degradation is not an isolated evil, or the mere negation of a better state; for it acts as a positive energy in developing moral evil, and brings in its train perverseness, destructiveness, loss of natural decency in habits, conversation and conduct, and many other ills which render their subjects painfully humiliating as human beings, and a source of trouble, annoyance, and expense to all those concerned with them. ”

“ While applying the nomenclature of disease to these exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion—lust, violence, cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a greed110 for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions in his nature. ”