But better too much openness
than too little. Squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably
narrow order; it is a shadow we want to illuminate out of existence.
Secrets will be contraband in the new time.
And if it chances to you to feel called upon to make a breach with the
institution or custom or prejudice that is, remember that doing so is
your own affair. You are going to take risks and specialize as an
experiment. You must not expect other people about you to share the
consequences of your dash forward. You must not drag in confidants and
secondaries. You must fight your little battle in front on your own
responsibility, unsupported--and take the consequences without repining.
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.
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