expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less share
of their favourable sentiments; but of this he has no right to complain,
unless he has merited their favour by special excellence in his social
relations, and has thus established a title to their good offices, which
is not affected by his demerits towards himself.
What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly
inseparable from the unfavourable judgment of others, are the only ones
to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his
conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not
affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts
injurious to others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment
on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified
by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair
or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish abstinence from
defending them against injury--these are fit objects of moral
reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment.
And not only these acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are
properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapprobation which may rise to
abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition; malice and ill-nature; that most
anti-social and odious of all passions, envy; dissimulation and
insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause, and resentment
disproportioned to the provocation; the love of domineering over others;
the desire to engross more than one's share of advantages (the [Greek:
pleonexia] of the Greeks); the pride which derives gratification from
the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks self and its concerns
more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions
in its own favour;--these are moral vices, and constitute a bad and
odious moral character: unlike the self-regarding faults previously
mentioned, which are not properly immoralities, and to whatever pitch
they may be carried, do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs of
any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but
they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach
of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care
for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not socially
obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to
others. The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than
prudence, means self-respect or self-development; and for none of these
is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, because for none of them
is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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