Moral guilt

“ But you're thinking of committing a crime, a crime against Hugh, a crime against yourself, a crime against love, every kind of love—and that's the worst crime of all—and you haven't the moral courage to shoulder the guilt yourself ”

“ There is no question anywhere around our globe that one who deliberately kills his mother or mangles his father, or tortures the innocent or defrauds his friend, is a wrong-doer, of abhorrent guilt. Over almost the entire broad field of moral obligation there is a consentient, clear and consistent judgment by the moral sense of man in all ages and places. ”

“ Various intellectual difficulties, however, hinder many people from seeing the working of the law of cause and effect in this presentment. One is the question, How can moral guilt be transferred from one person to another? ”

“ Whose moral sensibilities are not a little ruffled by a strange phantasmagoria of good people becoming bad of a sudden, and all of a sudden good again; good and happy, too, after every sort of misconduct, after the wickedest and foulest actions, with one touch of the wand all made right; guilt converted to innocence, with not a stain left behind—long-suffering virtue shall wed quick repentant vice—and all, it would seem, simply to bring the play to a happy ending? ”

“ There is not in human nature a more wonderful phenomenon, nor in the whole theory of it a more intricate speculation, than the shiftings, turnings, windings, and evasions of a guilty conscience. Such is our unalterable moral constitution, that an internal inclination to do wrong is criminal; and a wicked thought stains the mind with guilt, and makes it tingle with pain. ”

“ But, if guilt is always guilt, the quality of guilt is varied. Just as all virtue is not equally meritorious, so to other sources than personal unworthiness may often be traced moral debility that strives against natural causes, necessary conditions of environment and an ever-present and ever-active influence for evil. A fall does not always betoken profound degradation nor a stain, acute perversity of the will. ”

“ We saw, in speaking of punishment as retributive, in what sense it can and cannot rest upon a judgment imputing moral guilt. Of degrees of moral guilt as manifested in the particular acts of individuals, the State, like all of us, is necessarily ignorant. ”

“ It is unfairness, it is dishonesty, it is falseness of heart, and is, therefore, so far from extenuating guilt, that it is itself the greatest of all guilt in proportion to the degree it prevails; for it is a corruption of the whole moral character in its principle. Our understanding, and sense of good and evil, is the light and guide of life: "If, therefore, this light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?" ”

“ Our own secret souls, and that divine gospel which confirms all their sincere decisions, alike declare that my sin cannot be your sin; that by no compact, even by no miracle, can any exchange of responsibilities, or transfer of moral qualities, be effected. What indeed is guilt in its very nature, but a violation of some venerated rule of action,—a contravention of our own sentiments of equity, truth, purity, or generosity? and what is the guilty mind, but a system or habit of desire, which successfully resists the control of reason and conscience? ”

“ And though it is true that, by the inexorable decree of the Universe, “The Guilty suffer,” each man for himself and not another, temporal punishment, searching, terrible, and keen, yet this is not the whole of the truth governing the perfected ethics of the matter. For “Man learns by suffering.” And guilt is pardoned on repentance, that is, on the observance and on the performance of certain equally decreed conditions. ”

“ Through each step in guilt we can trace the cause of his ruin—moral cowardice, false pride, absence of self-control, alternating or uniting, but always with disastrous effect, until in the culminating scene, in which, torn by remorse and conscious guilt, he leaves his native shores a condemned felon and dies at sea, we feel that the punishment, no matter how severe, is but in strict accordance with our highest sense of retributive justice. ”

“ But when we feel our guilt, and perceive the moral danger to which it inevitably exposes us, we necessarily ask the question which the jailer of Philippi once put to the apostle, 'What must I do to be saved?' Will a person ever put such a question till he feels that he is in danger of being lost? ”

“ There is in the moral world, as in the physical, the absolute and perfect relation of cause and effect. For this reason, the atonement becomes an impossibility. Others may suffer by your crime, but their suffering cannot discharge you; it simply increases your guilt and adds to your burden. ”

“ The exceptions are found in those instances where false systems of philosophy have sophisticated the natural sense of guilt by destroying the consciousness of personality. All races of men have shown a feeling of moral delinquency and a corresponding fear. ”

“ But, as no one of us men can dispense with public or private faith, or with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can any number of us. The number engaged in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the quantity and intensity of the guilt. ”

“ If it were some private or personal sin, its guilt would be confined to an individual or a class, and its consequent miseries would be local and limited; but, inasmuch as it is the enactment of a great country, millions participate in its wickedness and its woe. ”

“ We charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as many of us might well have committed had we been in the defendants' positions. ”

“ He may, and in some cases does, feel anxious concern, and may regret the infatuation by which, in some unhappy case, a valuable life may be hazarded or destroyed. But he feels no moral responsibility for another's guilt. ”

“ In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind. ”

“ No motive, however good, can justify an evil end.
If any cause were plausible, it would be a grave injury, malicious and unjust. But not even this is sufficient, for we are forbidden to return evil for evil. It may cause us grief and pain, but should not incite us to anger, hatred and revenge. What poor excuses would therefore be accidental or slight injuries, just penalties for our wrongdoings and imaginary grievances! The less excusable is our wrath, the more serious is our delinquency. Our guilt is double-dyed when the deed and the cause of the deed are both alike unreasonable. ”

“ Thou alone knowest the wringing anguish, the desolation of sorrow that has made its home in thousands of poor mother's hearts, to be revealed only in that judgment day when the tempter and his victim shall be summoned to the bar of eternal justice, supplicants for that mercy which, while extended to all, abates naught of the exact measurement of the relative claims of each, neither absolves any from the righteous law of retribution which visits them in due proportion to their guilt.
"The first and most important question for us to decide, is the person to whom attaches the greatest guilt. ”

“ To Heaven I leave the vindication of my innocence. Its justice is sure, though sometimes slow, and the hour of retribution often arrives when least expected. Much as I have suffered—much as I may still suffer, I think my own situation preferable to theirs who have set their snares around me. The injurer must ever feel greater pangs than the injured—the pangs of guilt and remorse. I shall return to my obscurity, happy in the consciousness that it is not a shelter from shame, but a refuge from cruelty I seek. ”

“ He is innocent of the hideous crime laid to his charge—you know and feel that he is innocent; and were he guilty—I have heard you lament that crime is so hardly visited by the laws of society. I have heard you say, that even where guilt is joined to the hardness of habitual vice, that it ought to be treated with the indulgence of a correcting father, not by the cruel vengeance of the law. And now, when one whose very substance and flesh are corroded by remorse—one whose conscience acts as a perpetual scourge—one who has expiated his fault by many years spent in acts of benevolence and heroism ”

“ 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. ”

“ You proclaim that he has made your comfort, and even subsistence, to depend upon the practice of iniquity. It is an imputation he must repel with abhorrence and wrath. Nor is it sustained by the conscience, reason, or experience of any man.
But possibly you urge, in self-justification, Others will manufacture spirit, if I do not. But remember, the guilt of one is no excuse for another. “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” If others pursue a business at the sacrifice of character and of heaven, it becomes you to avoid their crime, that you may escape their doom. ”

“ It is that principle common to all, which prompts us to punish those who do wrong. An envious, malicious, or cruel action, is disagreeable to me even where I have no connection with the sufferer, and raises in me the painful emotion of resentment. The gratification of this emotion, when accompanied with desire, is directed by the principle now unfolded. Being prompted by my nature to punish guilt as well as to reward virtue, my desire is not gratified but by inflicting punishment. ”

“ Putting all your conduct together, it constitutes the most complicated and consummate wickedness to be found in the annals of the human race. Oh, what an inconceivable load of guilt lies on you! Oh, what a hideous monster of wickedness and deceit! Is there a God? is he righteous and just? Yes, yes. Continuing as you are, you will not only perish, but the common damned will shun your society, as fiends less foul. ”

“ But on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. ”

“ Cannot my guilt be extenuated? Is there not a good that I can do thee? Must I perpetrate unmingled evil? Is the province assigned me that of an infernal emissary, whose efforts are concentred in a single purpose, and that purpose a malignant one? I am the author of thy calamities. Whatever misery is reserved for thee, I am the source whence it flows. Can I not set bounds to the stream? Cannot I prevent thee from returning to a consciousness which, till it ceases to exist, will not cease to be rent and mangled? ”

“ I said to myself: the guilt that arises from what men do is small and scarcely comparable to the guilt that arises from what they fail to do. For what kinds of men are those, after all, who become guilty through their deeds? Poor, wretched, driven, desperate, half-mad creatures, who lift themselves up and bite the foot that treads them under. ”

“ The first principle in the management of the guilty seems to me to be to treat them as men and women; which they were before they were guilty, and will be when they are no longer so; and which they are in the midst of it all. Their humanity is the principal thing about them; their guilt is a temporary state. ”

“ It seemed as if all the disguises of vice were thrown off at once, and that iniquity stood forth in its own true and glaring livery. I do not believe that the heart can ever experience a ruder shock than when an unfledged criminal first hears himself welcomed into the “Masonry” of guilt. To be claimed by such associates as a fellow-laborer, to be received as one of the brethren into the guild of vice, is really an awful blow to one's self-esteem and respect ”

“ And each one of us ought to help to remedy the guilt, and just because others do not do so. The fact that society is guilty aggravates the guilt of each member of it. "Someone ought to do it, but why should I? ”

“ But, to recognize, as you do, that the object of your affections can only lead you into guilt and misery—and to persist in voluntarily plunging into an abyss of crime and sorrow, is a contradiction of thought and conduct which does small honor to your powers of reason. ”

“ It is the coldness of the judges, the painful preparations, the conviction that a human being is here being used as a warning to scare others. For the guilt is not punished, even if it existed—it lies with educators, parents, surroundings, in ourselves, not in the murderer—I mean the determining circumstances. ”

“ In some of the houses over which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue,—guilt is on the very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. ”

“ Duty to my conscience has driven me to acts that have betrayed me to society. I cannot shake my guilt from me even for a day; and now society coldly cancels all my claims to its attentions. If I could believe her dead ”

“ In spite of my good intentions, and this I say in answer to a question put in the beginning—in spite of my good intentions I was drawn into a guilt, I see it as a guilt into which human beings can be involved by tragic circumstances without any intention on their part. ”