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CHARACTER AND CONDUCT
are determined by his character, so that if his character be good his actions will also be good, and if his character be evil his actions will also be evil.[1] His conduct flows from his character, and is an index to it. In ordinary life we always assume—and we are perfectly right to do so—that a man's conduct reveals his character. In practice all our estimates of people's characters are based on what we know of their conduct. If we did not assume that conduct is determined by character, we could pass no moral judgments on the characters of others. We believe
- ↑ This is true on the whole. But many exceptions to the general rule may occur. Men of good character often do wrong, and men of evil character may do noble actions. But normally, in general, good character will issue in right actions. If a man acts inconsistently with his character, this may be explained in three ways:
(1) The self may not be completely systematised and unified. We may call the character good on the whole, though there may be aspects of the self which are not in harmony with the self as a whole. Hence isolated actions may be performed which are wrong and inconsistent with the character as a whole. Most people would agree that on the whole Queen Victoria's character was good, though some of her actions were undoubtedly wrong.
(2) A good man may do wrong because of inadequate knowledge. His wrong action is due to intellectual error, and not to voluntary sin. He is very often held responsible for his action, and he may even blame himself bitterly for it, but such an action is not really an expression of his character, unless his ignorance was due to culpable negligence.
(3) A good man may do wrong in a sudden gust of passion. Some overwhelming impulse may issue in action before he can marshal his moral strength to restrain it. In such cases a man is justly held responsible for his action on the ground that he ought to have been able to resist the temptation and control the impulse. But such an action is not really an expression of character. The man's character disclaims the impulsive action. "How could I have done it?" he asks himself afterwards. The action does not really reveal the character, at least in any positive way. What it does is to indicate a weakness in the character.
