to convert others to a simpler
kind of morality in wholly indifferent matters.

The sort of offences for which conscience condemns one, but to which no
legal penalty is attached, are things like petty cruelty, unnecessary
harshness, unkindness, introducing innocent people to evil thoughts and
ideas, disillusioning others, disappointing them. A man may do these
things and not only not be thought the worse of for them, but may
actually be thought the better of, as a person of spirit and manliness;
but if for any motive whatever, or even out of the strange duality of
nature that besets us, he yields to these things, then he is living by
the light of conventional morality and quenching his inner light, as
deliberately as if he blew out for mere wantonness a lantern in a dark
and precipitous place.

But if a man, looking narrowly and nearly into his own soul, says to
himself in perfect candour, I do not desire truth; I do not admire
self-sacrifice; I do not wish to be loved; I only wish to be healthy
and rich and popular: what then? What if he says to himself in entire
frankness that the only reason why he admires what are called virtues
is because there seem to be enough people in the world to admire them
to add to his credit if such virtues are attributed to him--what of his
case? Well, I would have him look closer yet and see if there is not
perhaps someone in the world, a mother, a sister, a child, whom he
loves with an unselfish love, whom he would willingly please if he
could, and would forbear to grieve though he could gain nothing by
doing so or abstaining from doing so. I do not honestly think that
there is any living being who would not discover this minimum of
disinterestedness in his spirit, and upon this slender foundation he
must try to build, for upon no other basis than genuine and native
truth can any life be built at all.

But as a rule, in most hearts, however hampered by habit and material
desires, there is a deep-seated desire to be worthier and better. And
all who discern such a desire in their hearts should endeavour to fan
it into flame, should warm their shivering hands at it, should frame it
as a constant aspiration, should live as far as possible with the
people and the books and the art which touches that frail desire into
life and makes them feel their possibilities. They may fail a thousand
times; but for all that, this is the seed of hope and love, the tree of
life that grows in the midst o