and quite as
full of pretentious moral reasons for doing it.

In short, when Major Barbara says that there are no scoundrels, she is
right: there are no absolute scoundrels, though there are impracticable
people of whom I shall treat presently. Every practicable man (and
woman) is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a
man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of
what he does, depends on his circumstances. The characteristics that
ruin a man in one class make him eminent in another. The characters
that behave differently in different circumstances behave alike in
similar circumstances. Take a common English character like that of
Bill Walker. We meet Bill everywhere: on the judicial bench, on the
episcopal bench, in the Privy Council, at the War Office and Admiralty,
as well as in the Old Bailey dock or in the ranks of casual unskilled
labor. And the morality of Bill's characteristics varies with these
various circumstances. The faults of the burglar are the qualities of
the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk
his situation. In short, though character is independent of
circumstances, conduct is not; and our moral judgments of character are
not: both are circumstantial. Take any condition of life in which the
circumstances are for a mass of men practically alike: felony, the
House of Lords, the factory, the stables, the gipsy encampment or where
you please! In spite of diversity of character and temperament, the
conduct and morals of the individuals in each group are as predicable
and as alike in the main as if they were a flock of sheep, morals being
mostly only social habits and circumstantial necessities. Strong people
know this and count upon it. In nothing have the master-minds of the
world been distinguished from the ordinary suburban season-ticket
holder more than in their straightforward perception of the fact that
mankind is practically a single species, and not a menagerie of
gentlemen and bounders, villains and heroes, cowards and daredevils,
peers and peasants, grocers and aristocrats, artisans and laborers,
washerwomen and duchesses, in which all the grades of income and caste
represent distinct animals who must not be introduced to one another or
intermarry. Napoleon constructing a galaxy of generals and courtiers,
and even of monarchs, out of his collection of social nobodies; Julius
Caesar appointing as governor of Egypt the s