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149
The need for little
deviant acts!— Sometimes to act against
one’s better judgment when it comes to questions of custom;
to give way in practice while keeping one’s reservations to oneself;
to do as everyone does and thus to show them consideration as it were
in compensation for our deviant opinions:—many tolerably freeminded
people regard this, not merely as unobjectionable, but as “honest,”
“humane,” “tolerant,” “not being pedantic,”
and whatever else those pretty words may be with which the intellectual
conscience is lulled to sleep: and thus this person takes his child
for Christian baptism though he is an atheist; and that person serves
in the army as all the world does, however much he may execrate hatred
between nations; and a third marries his wife in church because her
relatives are pious and is not ashamed to repeat vows before a priest.
“It doesn’t really matter if people like us also
do what everyone does and always has done”—this is the thoughtless
prejudice! The thoughtless error! For nothing matters
more than that an already mighty, anciently established and irrationally
recognized custom should be once more confirmed by a person recognized
as rational: it thereby acquires in the eyes of all who come to hear
of it the sanction of rationality itself! All respect to your opinions!
But little deviant acts are worth more! |
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