s self-indulgence has to
contend against the full force of the social as well as the higher
self-regarding motives, and its persistence is, therefore, the less
excusable.

I will next take the familiar case of a trust, voluntarily undertaken,
but involving considerable trouble to the trustee, a case of a much more
complicated character than the last. If the trustee altogether neglects
or does not devote a reasonable amount of attention to the affairs of
the trust, there is no doubt that, besides any legal penalties which he
may incur, he merits moral censure. Rather than sacrifice his own ease
or his own interests, he violates the obligation which he has undertaken
and brings inconvenience, or possibly disaster, to those whose interests
he has bound himself to protect. But the demands of the trust may become
so excessive as to tax the time and pains of the trustee to a far
greater extent than could ever have been anticipated, and to interfere
seriously with his other employments. In this case no reasonable person,
I presume, would censure the trustee for endeavouring, even at some
inconvenience or expense to the persons for whose benefit the trust
existed, to release himself from his obligation or to devolve part of
the work on a professional adviser. While, however, the work connected
with the trust did not interfere with other obligations or with the
promotion of the welfare of others, no one, I imagine, would censure the
trustee for continuing to perform it, to his own inconvenience or
disadvantage, if he chose to do so. His neighbours might, perhaps, say
that he was foolish, but they would hardly go to the length of saying
that he acted wrongly. Neither, on the other hand, would they be likely
to praise him, as the sacrifice he was undergoing would be out of
proportion to the good attained by it, and the interests of others to
which he was postponing his own interests would not be so distinctly
greater as to warrant the act of self-effacement. But now let us suppose
that, in attending to the interests of the trust, he is neglecting the
interests of others who have a claim upon him, or impairing his own
efficiency as a public servant or a professional man. If the interests
thus at stake were plainly much greater than those of the trust, as they
might well be, the attitude of neutrality would soon be converted into
one of positive censure, unless he took means to extricate himself from
the difficulty in which he was p