But this same man, perhaps, has been trained in a
way of conducting his business that, while legal, is not strictly fair.
This man may be hard and cruel towards his employees. He may cherish
bitter hatreds towards his rivals. In his heart he may be transgressing
the law of vital ethics, while fighting with all the power of his
nature for that which does not touch any real question of right or
wrong at all.
Or take a woman who, while shocked at the transgression of some social
custom in which she has been trained from her childhood, or, for
example, has come to think that a certain way of observing Lent, on
which we have just entered, is absolutely necessary to the safety of
religion and morals both, is yet quite willing, and without a qualm of
conscience, on the slightest hint of a suspicion, to tear into tatters
the character of one of her neighbors or friends, does not hesitate to
slander, perhaps is unjust or cruel to the servants that make the house
comfortable and beautiful for her; in other words, transgressing the
real laws of right and wrong, she is shocked and troubled over the
transgression on the part of others of some purely conventional
statute, the keeping or breach of which has no real bearing on the
welfare of the world.
A good many of our social judgments are like the case of the old lady
pardon me, if it should make you smile, but it illustrates the case who
criticised with a great deal of severity a neighbor and friend who wore
feathers on her bonnet.
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