n they are together, a kind of disease of
self-accusation attacks them. I suppose that it is the perversion of a
wholesome instinct, the desire not to be thought better than they are;
but part of the exaggerated stories that one hears about the low moral
tone of public schools arises from the fact that innocent boys coming
to a public school infer, and not unreasonably, from the talk of their
companions that they are by no means averse to evil, even when, as is
often the case, they are wholly untainted by it.

The same thing seems to me to prevail very widely nowadays. The
old-fashioned canting hypocrisy, like that of the old servant in the
Master of Ballantrae, who, suffering under the effects of drink, bears
himself like a Christian martyr, has gone out; just as the kind of
pride is extinct against which the early Victorian books used to warn
children, and which was manifested by sitting in a carriage surveying a
beggar with a curling lip--a course of action which was invariably
followed by the breaking of a Bank, or by some mysterious financial
operation involving an entire loss of fortune and respectability.

Nowadays the parable of the Pharisee and the publican is reversed. The
Pharisee tells his friends that he is in reality far worse than the
publican, while the publican thanks God that he is not a Pharisee. It
is only, after all, a different kind of affectation, and perhaps even
more dangerous, because it passes under the disguise of a virtue. We
are all miserable sinners, of course; but it is no encouragement to
goodness if we try to reduce ourselves all to the same level of
conscious corruption. The only advantage would be if, by our humility,
we avoided censoriousness. Let us frankly admit that our virtues are
inherited, and that any one who had had our chances would have done as
well or better than ourselves; neither ought we to be afraid of
expressing our admiration of virtue, and, if necessary, our abhorrence
of vice, so long as that abhorrence is genuine. The cure for the
present state of things is a greater naturalness. Perhaps it would end
in a certain increase of priggishness; but I honestly confess that
nowadays our horror of priggishness, and even of seriousness, has grown
out of all proportion; the command not to be a prig has almost taken
its place in the Decalogue. After all, priggishness is often little
more than a failure in tact, a breach of good manners; it is priggish
to be superior, and it