To respect the Law is to practise a wise selfishness. To act morally is to divest oneself of selfishness and attain the privilege of unselfishness. To behave in strict accordance with the Law earns the merited praise of civic blamelessness. But to act morally is a virtue which is of incomparably higher quality than that of mere blamelessness. The law-abiding man, the honest man, is praised as having been "_Integer vitae sceleris purus_." That is an acceptable epitaph. But the man of active Morality, willingly suffering for others, provides an example which reconciles millions to the hardships of life. The former is a worthy man, but the latter is a saint. CHAPTER V INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND COLLECTIVE IMMORALITY Men, who would be deeply offended if their Morality were called into question, quite coolly investigate the problem as to whether the State in its actions and omissions is bound by the same moral laws as the individual, and the majority of them come to the conclusion that in its relation to other States, the State must not be guided, that is to say, hampered, by moral considerations. They go further than this and not only liberate the State in its dealings with other countries from the trammels of Morality, but claim for the government the privilege of standing beyond and above the moral law in the conduct of public affairs, because to their mind both foreign and home politics move on a different plane to that of ethics. If anyone objects to this shameless contention, its advocates contemptuously dismiss him with the disdainful remark: "That is the drivel of a layman, and no man of science would waste his time on it." And if you were to reply: "Your views are those of gaolbirds who try after the event to hatch a theory justifying their misdeeds," they would probably shrug their shoulders and murmur scornfully: "The man is obviously mad."