We have outgrown old ethical systems, because the world has become
enlightened enough to perceive that every mind must make its own code;
to realize that what a man is must be his religion."
This course of reasoning was one shared by many of Fenton's friends,
and indeed by a goodly company of nineteenth century thinkers. Fenton
was in reality only going with the majority of liberalists in regarding
sincerity to personal conviction as the highest of ethical laws; and he
was generally pretty logical in choosing the approval of his inward
knowledge to that of the world outside. Yet his vanity was keenly
sensitive to disapprobation, and when the censure of the world
coincided with the condemnation of his own reason he suffered. To self-
contempt was added a baffled sense of having been discovered; and as
his imagination now ran forward to picture the effects of Irons's
disclosure, the suffering he endured was really pitiful.
"Nobody will understand," he said to himself one day, half in bitter
self-contempt and half in self-defence, "that I couldn't help doing as
I did; no cruelty surpasses that of holding weak and sensitive natures
accountable for shortcomings they are born incapable of avoiding."
And having accomplished an epigram at his own expense, he felt as if he
had to some degree atoned for his fault, just as a flagellant looks
upon his self-scourging as expiatory.
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