Lay Morals, and Other PapersStevenson, Robert Louis
Philosophy
Lay Morals, and Other Papers
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Essays; Short stories
scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse of something new, is a letter
of God’s alphabet; and though there is a grave responsibility for all who
speak, is there none for those who unrighteously keep silence and
conform? Is not that also to conceal and cloak God’s counsel? And how
should we regard the man of science who suppressed all facts that would
not tally with the orthodoxy of the hour?
Wrong? You are as surely wrong as the sun rose this morning round the
revolving shoulder of the world. Not truth, but truthfulness, is the
good of your endeavour. For when will men receive that first part and
prerequisite of truth, that, by the order of things, by the greatness of
the universe, by the darkness and partiality of man’s experience, by the
inviolate secrecy of God, kept close in His most open revelations, every
man is, and to the end of the ages must be, wrong? Wrong to the
universe; wrong to mankind; wrong to God. And yet in another sense, and
that plainer and nearer, every man of men, who wishes truly, must be
right. He is right to himself, and in the measure of his sagacity and
candour. That let him do in all sincerity and zeal, not sparing a
thought for contrary opinions; that, for what it is worth, let him
proclaim. Be not afraid; although he be wrong, so also is the dead,
stuffed Dagon he insults. For the voice of God, whatever it is, is not
that stammering, inept tradition which the people holds. These truths
survive in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and
confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, in
their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and misinterpret.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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