It is inconsistent to acquiesce in faulty practice and not to acquiesce
in the growth of ideals, even though one may believe that the advance
is due to some external cause and is not self-developed. If performance
is always more or less straining after the ideal, the determinist is
justified in expecting a higher standard of performance, and his
fatalism may take the direction of removing the obstacles to further
improvement. But in dealing with individuals the moralist does well to
temper his hopes with a wise determinism, and not to be too much cast
down if one to whom he has made clear the disastrous effects of
yielding to temptation cannot at once harmonise his purpose and his
practice. If it were true, as too many preachers take for granted, that
we have all, whatever our difference of physical and mental equipment,
an equal sense of moral responsibility, the result would be to plunge
us into hopeless pessimism. The question is whether the moralist is
justified in pretending, for the sake of the effort that it may
produce, to the victim of some moral weakness, that he really has the
power of conquering his fault. He may say to himself, "Some people have
the power of self-mastery, and it is better to assume that all have,
because it tends to produce a greater effort than if one merely tries
to console a moral weakling for his deficiencies." But this is a
dangerous and casuistical path to tread.

It may be justified perhaps on the medical theory that if you tell a
man he will get well, even if you consider him to be doomed, he is more
likely to get well than if you tell him that you consider him to be
doomed. But it is surely wrong to display no more moral indignation in
the case of a vigorous person who has perversely indulged some
temptation which he might have resisted, than in the case of one who is
hampered by inheritance with a violent predisposition to moral evil.
Even the most ardent moralist ought to be true to what he knows to be