"
"But," I said, "beautiful as that thought is--and I see and recognise
its beauty--it does limit the individual responsibility very greatly.
Surely a prudential morality, the morality which is just because it
fears reprisal, and is kind because it anticipates kindness, is better
than none at all? The morality of which you speak can only belong to the
noblest human creatures."
"Only to the noblest," he said; "and I must repeat what I said before,
that the prudential morality is useless, because it begins at the wrong
end, and is set upon self throughout. I must say deliberately that the
soul which loves unreasonably and unwisely, which even yields itself to
the passion of others for the pleasure it gives rather than for the
pleasure it receives--the thriftless, lavish, good-natured,
affectionate people, who are said to make such a mess of their
lives--are far higher in the scale of hope than the cautiously
respectable, the prudently kind, the selfishly pure. There must be no
mistake about this. One must somehow or other give one's heart away, and
it is better to do it in error and disaster than to treasure it for
oneself.
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