ce. If it be asked how actions of this kind, seeing that they are
done out of some regard to others, can be described as involving
self-indulgence, or the resistance to them can be looked on in the light
of sacrifice, it may be replied that the conflict is between a feeling
of sociality or a spirit of over-complaisance or the like, on the one
side, and a man's self-respect or a regard to his own highest interests,
on the other, and that some natures find it much easier to yield to the
former than to maintain the latter. It is quite possible that the spirit
of sacrifice may be exhibited in the maintenance, against temptation, of
a man's own higher interests, and the spirit of self-indulgence in
weakly yielding to a perverted sympathy or an exaggerated regard for the
opinions of others.

Before concluding this chapter, there are a few objections to be met and
explanations to be made. In the first place, it may be objected that the
theory I have adopted, that the moral feeling is excited only where
there has been a conflict of motives, runs counter to the ordinary view,
that acts proceeding from a virtuous or vicious habit are done without
any struggle and almost without any consciousness of their import. I do
not at all deny that a habit may become so perfect that the acts
proceeding from it cease to involve any struggle between conflicting
motives, but, in this case, I conceive that our approbation or
disapprobation is transferred from the individual acts to the habit from
which they spring, and that what we really applaud or condemn is the
character rather than the actions, or at least the actions simply as
indicative of the character. And the reason that we often praise or
blame acts proceeding from habit more than acts proceeding from
momentary impulse is that we associate such acts with a good or evil
character, as the case may be, and, therefore, include the character as
well as the acts in the judgment which we pass upon them.

It may possibly have occurred to the reader that, in the latter part of
this chapter, I have been somewhat inconsistent in referring usually to
the social sanction of praise and blame rather than to the distinctively
moral sanction of self-approbation and self-disapprobation. I have
employed this language solely for the sake of convenience, and to avoid
the cumbrous phraseology which the employment of the other phrases would
sometimes have occasioned. In a civilized and educated community, t