The Stuff of Manhood

Synopsis

The moral elements of individual character are inevitably social. And the social obligation immensely strengthens the sanctions which enjoin them. When a man “has trained himself,” to use the words of Lord Morley in dealing with Voltaire’s religion, “to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and advantage ... as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the future of his brothers,” he views each struggle within his own soul against evil and each firm aspiration after purity not as a mere incident in his own spiritual biography but as a fight for social good and for the perfecting of the nation and of humanity. And the struggle for social good and the perfecting of human life is fundamentally a struggle for the triumph of ideals in personal wills

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