Again, this enlightened consciousness will yield to infinitely fewer
laws, admit infinitely fewer doubtful or harmful duties. There is, one
may say, scarcely a falsehood or error, a prejudice, half-truth or
convention, that is not capable of assuming, that does not actually
assume, when the occasion presents itself, the form of a duty in an
uncertain consciousness. It is thus that honour, in the chivalrous,
conjugal sense of the word (I refer to the honour of the husband, which
is supposed to suffer by the infidelity of the wife) that revenge, a
kind of morbid prudishness, pride, vanity, piety to certain gods, and a
thousand other illusions, have been, and still remain, the unquenchable
source of a multitude of duties that are still regarded as absolutely
sacred, absolutely incontrovertible, by a vast number of inferior
consciousnesses. And these so-called duties are the pivot of almost all
the dramas of the Romantic period, as of most of those of to-day. But
not one of these sombre, pitiless duties, that so fatally impel mankind
to death and disaster, can readily take root in the consciousness that a
healthy, living light has adequately penetrated; in such there will be
no room for honour or vengeance, for conventions that clamour for blood.
It will hold no prejudices that exact tears, no injustice eager for
sorrow. It will have cast from their throne the gods who insist on
sacrifice, and the love that craves for death. For when the sun has
entered into the consciousness of him who is wise, as we may hope that
it will some day enter into that of all men, it will reveal one duty,
and one alone, which is that we should do the least possible harm and
love others as we love ourselves; and from this duty no drama can
spring.