"Prithee, was ever one of us capable of not lecturing on ethics or not
preaching a sermon? Did not Sir Barnes Newcome lecture on the Family? Do
we not all hold forth on the condition of the poor, the morality of the
mining-market; the inferior ethics of the coloured races, and a hundred
other lofty topics, warming our coat-tails at the glow of our own virtue?
'T is the fault of language which enables arrant scoundrels to use fine
words that they have never felt. Humility, self-sacrifice,
noble-mindedness, are phrases easily picked up by people for whom their
only meaning is in the dictionary, and who know it is the correct thing
to admire them. They are like students of chemistry who babble of H2SO4
and NH3 by book without ever having seen a laboratory or a retort, or
tone-deaf people raving over Beethoven. And these lip-servants of virtue
are unconscious that they have never known the real thing. Every
discussion between civilised persons presupposes moral perfection all
round--a common elevated platform from which one surveys the age and its
problems, and considers how to bring the world at large up to one's own
level. You cannot discuss anything with a person who has ever been
publicly imperfect--at any point you may tread on his corns.
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