And it was just that which had most disconcerted me in my dealings with him.When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves.Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours.It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem.You have the self- satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger.But the desire for approbation is perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man.No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety.I do not believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of their fellows.It is the bravado of ignorance.They mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they are convinced none will discover.
But here was a man who sincerely did not mind what people thought of him, and so convention had no hold on him; he was like a wrestler whose body is oiled; you could not get a grip on him; it gave him a freedom which was an outrage.I remember saying to him:
"Look here, if everyone acted like you, the world couldn't go on.""That's a damned silly thing to say.Everyone doesn't want to act like me.The great majority are perfectly content to do the ordinary thing."And once I sought to be satirical.
"You evidently don't believe in the maxim:Act so that every one of your actions is capable of being made into a universal rule.""I never heard it before, but it's rotten nonsense." "Well, it was Kant who said it.""I don't care; it's rotten nonsense."
Nor with such a man could you expect the appeal to conscience to be effective. You might as well ask for a rejection without a mirror. I take it that conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.It is the policeman in all our hearts, set there to watch that we do not break its laws.It is the spy seated in the central stronghold of the ego.Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.It will force him to place the good of society before his own.It is the very strong link that attaches the individual to the whole.And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster.He sits him in a seat of honour.At last, like a courtier fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the sensitiveness of his conscience.Then he has no words hard enough for the man who does not recognise its sway; for, a member of society now, he realises accurately enough that against him he is powerless.When I saw that Strickland was really indifferent to the blame his conduct must excite, I could only draw back in horror as from a monster of hardly human shape.
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:
"Tell Amy it's no good coming after me.Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.""My own impression is that she's well rid of you," I said.
"My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it.Butwomen are very unintelligent."
