I did the whole
thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was looking
out for MY share of the profits FIRST. Now then, I have confessed. Go
on.
O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any MORE strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only?
Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played
the limit!
O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect--and I claim to KNOW--that when a
man is a shade MORE STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two
dozen things than he is to do any one of the OTHERS, he will infallibly
do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all
the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the
impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment
he will get out of the act.
Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that
good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the
sake of No. 1?
O.M. That is what I fully believe.
Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
O.
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