uch essentially grave anti-social deeds. We must
distinguish between sins on the one hand and mere errors of judgment and
differences of taste from ourselves. To draw up harsh laws, to practise
exclusions against everyone who does not see fit to duplicate one's own
blameless home life, is to waste a number of courageous and exceptional
persons in every generation, to drive many of them into a forced
alliance with real crime and embittered rebellion against custom and the
law.

3.30. CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE THING THAT IS.

But the reader must keep clear in his mind the distinction between
conduct that is right or permissible in itself and conduct that becomes
either inadvisable or mischievous and wrong because of the circumstances
about it. There is no harm under ordinary conditions in asking a boy
with a pleasant voice to sing a song in the night, but the case is
altered altogether if you have reason to suppose that a Red Indian is
lying in wait a hundred yards off, holding a loaded rifle and ready to
fire at the voice. It is a valid objection to many actions that I do
not think objectionable in themselves, that to do them will discharge
a loaded prejudice into the heart of my friend--or even into my own. I
belong to the world and my work, and I must not lightly throw my time,
my power, my influence away. For a splendid thing any risk or any
defiance may be justifiable, but is it a sufficiently splendid thing?
So far as he possibly can a man must conform to common prejudices,
prevalent customs and all laws, whatever his estimate of them may be.
But he must at the same time to his utmost to change what he thinks to
be wrong.

And I think that conformity must be honest conformity. There is no more
anti-social act than secret breaches, and only some very urgent and
exceptional occasion justifies even the unveracity of silence about the
thing done. If your personal convictions bring you to a breach, let it
be an open breach, let there be no misrepresentation of attitudes, no
meanness, no deception of honourable friends. Of course an open breach
need not be an ostentatious breach; to do what is right to yourself
without fraud or concealment is one thing, to make a challenge and
aggression quite another. Your friends may understand and sympathize
and condone, but it does not lie upon you to force them to identify
themselves with your act and situation. But better too much openness
than too little. Squalid intrig