Nowadays the parable of the Pharisee and the publican is reversed.  The Pharisee tells his friends that he is in reality far worse than the publican, while the publican thanks God that he is not a Pharisee.  It is only, after all, a different kind of affectation, and perhaps even more dangerous, because it passes under the disguise of a virtue.  We are all miserable sinners, of course; but it is no encouragement to goodness if we try to reduce ourselves all to the same level of conscious corruption.  The only advantage would be if, by our humility, we avoided censoriousness.  Let us frankly admit that our virtues are inherited, and that any one who had had our chances would have done as well or better than ourselves; neither ought we to be afraid of expressing our admiration of virtue, and, if necessary, our abhorrence of vice, so long as that abhorrence is genuine.  The cure for the present state of things is a greater naturalness.  Perhaps it would end in a certain increase of priggishness; but I honestly confess that nowadays our horror of priggishness, and even of seriousness, has grown out of all proportion; the command not to be a prig has almost taken its place in the Decalogue.  After all, priggishness is often little more than a failure in tact, a breach of good manners; it is priggish to be superior, and it is vulgar to let a consciousness of superiority escape you.  But it is not priggish to be virtuous, or to have a high artistic standard, or to care more for masterpieces of literature than for second-rate books, any more than it is priggish to be rich or well-connected.  The priggishness comes in when you begin to compare yourself with others, and to draw distinctions.  The Pharisee in the parable was a prig; and just as I have known priggish hunting men, and priggish golfers, and even priggish card-players, so I have known people who were priggish about having a low standard of private virtue, because they disapproved of people whose standard was higher.  The only cure is frankness and simplicity; and one should practise the art of talking simply and directly among congenial people of what one admires and believes in.

How I run on!  But it is a comfort to write about these things to some one who will understand; to “cleanse the stuff’d bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.”  By the way, how careless the repetition of “stuff’d” “stuff” is in that line!  And yet it can’t be unintentional, I suppose?

I enjoy your letters very much; and I am glad to hear that you are beginning to “take interest,” and are already feeling better.  Your views of the unchangeableness of personality are very surprising; but I must think them over for a little; I will write about them before long.  Meanwhile, my love to you all.—­Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
Feb. 25, 1904.