the contemporary
multitude so long as he has the trust of his small band of comrades
or faith that the Lord approves his ways. A man who
is utterly alone in the approval of his actions is regarded as
crazy or is driven so by the perpetual disesteem in which he is
held. There have been cases in literature and life of accused
criminals who could bear up against the belief of the whole
world in their guilt so long as one friend or kinsman had faith
in them. That faith gone, they completely collapsed.

DESIRE FOR PRAISE MAY LEAD TO THE PROFESSION RATHER THAN THE
PRACTICE OF VIRTUE. While the desire for social approval is
strong in most men, so are other desires. It happens, moreover,
that the actions to which men's instincts prompt them
are not always such as would be approved by others.[1] In
order, therefore, to have their cake and eat it, to do what they
please and yet seem to please others, men often conceal the
discrepancy between what they profess and what they practice.
One of the least agreeable features of civilized society
is the extent to which the codes which men and groups profess
differ from those by which they live. Men who have ostensibly
Christian codes of honor, and, indeed, practice them in
their private lives, will have an actual "ethics" for business
that they could not possibly sanction in their dealings as
trustees of a church. There are practices within trades and
professions, the familiar "trade" practices, and "ethics" of
the profession, which, for social as well as for professional
reasons, their practitioners would not want known. "Company"
manners are a trivial illustration of this, but there are
more serious instances. One has but to recall the sensation
created a few years ago when a minister of a fashionable
congregation called upon his congregation to practice Christianity,
or, on a superb scale, Tolstoy's leaving the estates and
mode of life of a rich Russian noble, in order to live the simple
life he regarded as prescribed by the Christian teaching.[2]

[Footnote 1: At least not publicly approved. There is, however,
admiration, often unconcealed, for the man who does even an
unusual act conspicuously well. One need only mention a Raffles
or a Captain Kidd.]

[Footnote 2: See Tolstoy's _Diary_ and _Confessions_.]

Psychologically, therefore, the cause of the discrepancy
between the codes which men preach and profess and those
which they practice, is thus seen to be a desire to secu