There is a higher
and a lower in morals, but the lower is recognized as a lower, and
does not appeal to a surface reading of the code of an aboriginal in
discussing morals. That, I think is only fair. Your artistic sense is
finely developed, but it is none the less firmly based, although there
are Victorian back parlors and paper roses.
"You see you are a preacher, not merely an artist. Every glimpse of
the beautiful urges the beholder to imitation and _vice versa_.
And that is why your 'Memoirs' are not merely 'an exhibition' of the
immoral; they are 'an incitement' to the immoral. Don't you think so?
And thinking so would you not honestly admit, that society (in the
wide sense, of course--civilization) would relapse, go down,
deliquesce, if all of us were George Moores as depicted in your book?"
His letter dropped from my hand, and I sat muttering, "How
superficially men think!" How little they trouble themselves to
discover the truth! While declaring that truth is all important, they
accept any prejudice and convention they happen to meet, fastening on
to it like barnacles. How disappointing is that passage about the
murderer, the sensualist, the liar, and the coward; but of what use
would it be to remind my correspondent of Judith who went into the
tent of Holofernes to lie with him, and after the love feast drove a
nail into the forehead of the sleeping man.
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