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He became, in popular acceptance, the Great, the Unique Man, in some sense the Son of God, Prophet and Teacher of the new and nobler morality. So there grew up "a personal devotion to Jesus Christ, who brought the doctrine to His disciples and made a passage for it into their hearts."
Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. A drumming of fists on the door outside and a cheerful bellowing encourage and clarify his thoughts; and he is able to observe some newspapers and circulars in wrappers lying on the table.
"I will not here," says he, "so far debase myself as to enlarge the ignominious list of those writers who devote their abilities to justify by policy what morality condemns. In an age where so many errors are boldly laid open, it would be unpardonable to conceal any truth that is interesting to humanity.
There is just one right way of spelling, and all others are held to be not simply inelegant or undesirable, but wrong; and unorthodox spelling, like original morality, goes hand in hand with shame. Yet even at the risk of shocking the religious convictions of some, may not one ask whether spelling is in truth a matter of right and wrong at all? Might it not rather be an art?
The explanation may be that women live closer to nature than men; that they set more store on sentiment and passion than those of the opposite sex; also, perhaps, because they instinctively rebel against a male-manufactured morality to which women have to subscribe, largely for the benefit of men whose observance of moral law is more "honoured in the breach than in the observance."
And when he asks, in connection with this suggestion, "Who is right, Kant, or the common moral sense? Which should be followed, the philosophic morality, or the practice of otherwise most truthful men?" his own preliminary assertions are his conclusive answer.
He would accuse me of perverting its morality and attacking its efficiency. He would define it bitterly as protection extended to the criminal class of revolutionists. It would mean just that to him.” “Yes. But what do you mean?”
It is not assuredly and nobody has ever maintained this proposition that well-directed instruction may not give very useful practical results, if not in the sense of raising the standard of morality, at least in that of developing professional capacity.
It represents life and it enjoins morality, but it is only as a work of art that it attains consideration; that, in the words of M. Lemaitre, it "exists" for us at all. Its aim is beauty, and beauty is its excuse for being. The type belongs to natural history.
This the law of morality requires; all nations have ever exacted that this passion shall be subject to established rules; no free-love has ever been tolerated where there was the least pretence to civilization, and I do not know that it was ever permitted even among barbarians.