ey knew what kind of
woman she was. And the strange thing was that she did not believe
herself to be a bad woman; at the bottom of her heart she loved truth
and sincerity. She wished to have an ideal and to live up to it, yet she
was doing the very opposite. That was what was so strange, that was what
she did not understand, that was what made her incomprehensible to
herself. She sighed, and at the bottom of her heart there lay an immense
weariness, a weariness of life, of the life she was leading, and she
longed for a life that would coincide with her principles, and she felt
that if she did not change her life, she would do something desperate.
She might kill herself.

It is true that man is a moral animal, but it is not true that there is
but one morality; there are a thousand, the morality of each race is
different, the morality of every individual differs. The origin of each
sect is the desire to affirm certain moral ideas which particularly
appeal to it; every change of faith is determined by the moral
temperament of the individual; we prefer this religion to that religion
because our moral ideas are more implicit in these affirmations than in
those.

The restriction of sexual intercourse is the moral ideal of Western
Europe; it is the one point on which all Christians are agreed; it is
the one point on which they all feel alike. So inherent is the idea of
sexual continence in the Western hemisphere that even those whose
practice does not coincide with their theory rarely impugn the wisdom of
the law which they break; they prefer to plead the weakness of the flesh
as their excuse, and it is with reluctance that they admit that without
an appeal to conscience it would be impossible to prove that it is wrong
for two unmarried people to live together. It is not perceived that the
fact that no material proof can be produced strengthens rather than
weakens the position of the moralist. To do unto others as you would be
done unto, to love your neighbour as yourself, are practical moralities
which may be derived from social necessities, but the abstract
moralities, that sexual intercourse is wrong except between married
people, and that it is wrong to tell a lie, even if the lie be a
perfectly harmless one, exist of themselves. That we cannot bring
abstract moralities into the focus of our understanding is no argument.
As well deny the stars because we cannot understand them. That abstract
moralities impose on us shoul