d, that
it is always the sins that shock us most. Much as we enjoy the whisper
of how a great man beats his wife, or a poet drinks, or some merry
Greek has flirted her virtue away, we would shake our heads over them
with equal gravity if they had the virtues of Buddhist monks and
sisters. It is the virtues that shock us no less than the vices.
Perhaps it was because Swinburne gave utterance to the horror a great
many quite normal people feel for virtue that, in spite of an
intellect of far from splendid quality, he ended his life as something
of a prophet. Tolstoi never shocked Europe more than a hair's weight
so long as he blundered through the seven sins like nearly any other
man of his class. He only scandalised us when he began to try to live
in literal obedience to the Sermon on the Mount. When we are in
church, no doubt, we say fie to the young man who had great
possessions and would not sell all that he had and give to the poor,
as Jesus commanded him. But in real life we should be troubled only if
the young man took such a command seriously. Obviously, then, the
psychology of being shocked cannot be explained in terms of triumphant
virtue. We must look for an explanation rather in the widespread
instinct which forbids a man to be different either in virtues or in
vices from other people. It arises out of a loyalty to ordinary
standards, which the average man has made for his comfort--perhaps, we
should say, for his self-respect. To deny these standards in one's
life is like denying a foot-rule--which would be an outrage on the
common-sense of the whole trade union of carpenters. Or one might put
it this way. To live publicly like a saint is as disturbing as if you
were to ask a tailor to measure your soul instead of your legs. It is
to whisk your neighbour into a world of new dimensions--to leave him
dangling where he can scarcely breathe. This does not, it may be
thought, explain the attitude of the shocked man towards sinners. But,
after all, we are very tolerant of sinners until they break some code
of our class. John Bright defended adulteration because he was a
manufacturer. Grocers object to the forgery of cheques, which is a
danger to their business, in a manner in which they do not object to
the forgery of jam, which puts money in their purses. We are more
shocked by the man who gets drunk furiously once in six months than by
the man who tipples all the time, not because the former is more
surely destroy