The surgeon, though often more unscrupulous than the general
practitioner, retains his self-respect more easily. The human conscience
can subsist on very questionable food. No man who is occupied in doing
a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his
self-respect. The shirk, the duffer, the malingerer, the coward, the
weakling, may be put out of countenance by his own failures and frauds;
but the man who does evil skilfully, energetically, masterfully, grows
prouder and bolder at every crime. The common man may have to found his
self-respect on sobriety, honesty and industry; but a Napoleon needs no
such props for his sense of dignity. If Nelson's conscience whispered to
him at all in the silent watches of the night, you may depend on it it
whispered about the Baltic and the Nile and Cape St. Vincent, and not
about his unfaithfulness to his wife. A man who robs little children
when no one is looking can hardly have much self-respect or even
self-esteem; but an accomplished burglar must be proud of himself. In
the play to which I am at present preluding I have represented an artist
who is so entirely satisfied with his artistic conscience, even to the
point of dying like a saint with its support, that he is utterly selfish
and unscrupulous in every other relation without feeling at the smallest
disadvantage. The same thing may be observed in women who have a genius
for personal attractiveness: they expend more thought, labor, skill,
inventiveness, taste and endurance on making themselves lovely than
would suffice to keep a dozen ugly women honest; and this enables them
to maintain a high opinion of themselves, and an angry contempt for
unattractive and personally careless women, whilst they lie and cheat
and slander and sell themselves without a blush. The truth is, hardly
any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible
point of honor. Andrea del Sarto, like Louis Dubedat in my play, must
have expended on the attainment of his great mastery of design and his
originality in fresco painting more conscientiousness and industry
than go to the making of the reputations of a dozen ordinary mayors and
churchwardens; but (if Vasari is to be believed) when the King of France
entrusted him with money to buy pictures for him, he stole it to
spend on his wife. Such cases are not confined to eminent artists.
Unsuccessful, unskilful men are often much more scrupulous than
successful ones. In the ranks of ordinary skilled labor many men are to
be found who earn good wages and are never out of a job because they are
strong, indefatigable, and skilful, and who therefore are bold in a high
opinion of themselves; but they are selfish and tyrannical, gluttonous
and drunken, as their wives and children know to their cost.
Not only do these talented energetic people retain their self-respect
through shameful misconduct: they do not even lose the respect of
others, because their talents benefit and interest everybody, whilst
their vices affect only a few. An actor, a painter, a composer, an
author, may be as selfish as he likes without reproach from the public
if only his art is superb; and he cannot fulfil his condition without
sufficient effort and sacrifice to make him feel noble and martyred in
spite of his selfishness. It may even happen that the selfishness of
an artist may be a benefit to the public by enabling him to concentrate
himself on their gratification with a recklessness of every other
consideration that makes him highly dangerous to those about him. In
sacrificing others to himself he is sacrificing them to the public he
gratifies; and the public is quite content with that arrangement. The
public actually has an interest in the artist's vices.
It has no such interest in the surgeon's vices. The surgeon's art is
exercised at its expense, not for its gratification. We do not go to the
operating table as we go to the theatre, to the picture gallery, to the
concert room, to be entertained and delighted: we go to be tormented and
maimed, lest a worse thing should befall us. It is of the most extreme
importance to us that the experts on whose assurance we face this horror
and suffer this mutilation should leave no interests but our own to
think of; should judge our cases scientifically; and should feel about
them kindly. Let us see what guarantees we have: first for the science,
and then for the kindness.