3.31. CONDUCT TOWARDS TRANSGRESSORS.
So far as breaches of the prohibitions and laws of marriage go, to me it
seems they are to be tolerated by us in others just in the measure that,
within the limits set by discretion, they are frank and truthful and
animated by spontaneous passion and pervaded by the quality of beauty. I
hate the vulgar sexual intriguer, man or woman, and the smart and
shallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity about the type as I hate
few kinds of human life; I would as lief have a polecat in my home as
this sort of person; and every sort of prostitute except the victim of
utter necessity I despise, even though marriage be the fee. But honest
lovers should be I think a charge and pleasure for us. We must judge
each pair as we can.
One thing renders a sexual relationship incurably offensive to others
and altogether wrong, and that is cruelty. But who can define cruelty?
How far is the leaving of a third person to count as cruelty? There
again I hesitate to judge. To love and not be loved is a fate for which
it seems no one can be blamed; to lose love and to change one's loving
belongs to a subtle interplay beyond analysis or control, but to be
deceived or mocked or deliberately robbed of love, that at any rate is
an abominable wrong.
In all these matters I perceive a general rule is in itself a possible
instrument of cruelty. I set down what I can in the way of general
principles, but it all leaves off far short of the point of application.
Every case among those we know I think we moderns must judge for
ourselves. Where there is doubt, there I hold must be charity. And with
regard to strangers, manifestly our duty is to avoid inquisitorial and
uncharitable acts.
This is as true of financial and economic misconduct as of sexual
misconduct, of ways of living that are socially harmful and of political
faith. We are dealing with people in a maladjusted world to whom
absolute right living is practically impossible, because there are no
absolutely right institutions and no simple choice of good or evil, and
we have to balance merits and defects in every case.
Some people are manifestly and essentially base and self-seeking and
regardless of the happiness and welfare of their fellows, some in
business affairs and politics as others in love. Some wrong-doers again
are evidently so through heedlessness, through weakness, timidity or
haste. We have to judge and deal with each sort upon no clear issue, but
upon impressions they have given us of their spirit and purpose. We owe
it to them and ourselves not to judge too rashly or too harshly, but for
all that we are obliged to judge and take sides, to avoid the malignant
and exclude them from further opportunity, to help and champion the
cheated and the betrayed, to forgive and aid the repentant blunderer and
by mercy to save the lesser sinner from desperate alliance with the
greater. That is the broad rule, and it is as much as we have to go upon
until the individual case comes before us.
