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The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson
page 47 of 308 (15%)
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.

But if a man, looking narrowly and nearly into his own soul, says to
himself in perfect candour, I do not desire truth; I do not admire
self-sacrifice; I do not wish to be loved; I only wish to be healthy
and rich and popular: what then? What if he says to himself in entire
frankness that the only reason why he admires what are called virtues
is because there seem to be enough people in the world to admire them
to add to his credit if such virtues are attributed to him--what of his
case? Well, I would have him look closer yet and see if there is not
perhaps someone in the world, a mother, a sister, a child, whom he
loves with an unselfish love, whom he would willingly please if he
could, and would forbear to grieve though he could gain nothing by
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