luable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the
objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness,
discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance,
imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or
misfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is
one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of
virtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins to care about what
others will say of circumstances not under his own control, such as his
race, his origin, his appearance, his physical defects, or his lack of
wealth or natural talents, he may be laying up for himself a store of
incalculable misery, and is certainly enfeebling his character and
impairing his chances of future usefulness. It is under the influence of
this motive, for instance, that many a man lives above his income, not
for the purpose of gratifying any real wants either of himself or his
family, but for the sake of 'keeping up appearances,' though he is
exposing his creditors to considerable losses, his family to many
probable disadvantages, and himself to almost certain disgrace in the
future. It is under the influence of this motive, too, that many men, in
the upper and middle classes, rather than marry on a modest income, and
drop out of the society of their fashionable acquaintance, form
irregular sexual connexions, which are a source of injury to themselves
and ruin to their victims.

A circumstance which has probably contributed largely, in recent times,
to aggravate the feeling of false shame is the new departure which, in
commercial communities, has been taken by class-distinctions. The old
line, which formed a sharp separation between the nobility and all other
classes, has been almost effaced, and in its place have been substituted
many shades of difference between different grades of society, together
with a broad line of demarcation between what may be called the genteel
and the ungenteel classes. It was a certain advantage of the old line
that it could not be passed, and, hence, though there might be some
jealousy felt towards the nobility as a class, there were none of the
heart-burnings which attach to an uncertain position or a futile effort
to rise. In modern society, on the other hand, there is hardly any one
whose position is so fixed, that he may not easily rise above or fall
below it, and hence there is constant room for social ambition, social