Indeed, why you do a thing matters far more than what you do. It is easy to conceive of a thoroughly lethargic person who, for mere want of vitality, lives a most respectable life. He has not energy enough--and thereby is less of a man--to commit the usual errors. But the question seriously arises as to whether he had not better be more of a man and commit them. I hasten over this difficult phase, and conceive of him again as more vital than ever, and abstaining from the usual crimes because he is now above them rather than below them. He looks down on them instead of gazing feebly up at them. In actual result, his conduct as regards errors is the same, but who can doubt about the respective values of the respective conducts? The two are poles apart (though in net and tangible result the extremes meet), for no one can say that the man who does not cheat at cards simply from fear of detection has the smallest spiritual affinity with the average person who plays honestly because he is honest.
There is a periodical piece of business in shops and places where they sell things, called stock-taking, and, as its name implies, it consists in the owner going through the goods and seeing what he has got. It is a useful custom, not only in shops, but as applied by ordinary individuals to themselves, and the first day of a New Year is a date commonly in use as the day of internal stock-taking. Very sensible people will tell you that the division of one's life into years is a purely arbitrary arrangement, and that December 31st is not severed from January 1st by any more real division than July 3rd is severed from July 4th. But less superbly-constituted minds fall back on these arbitrary arrangements, and with the sense that they are starting again on January 1st, they often have a look round their cupboards and shelves to see what they have in hand. It is a disagreeable sort of business; you will find that your things have got very dusty and dirty, and that probably there is much that should be thrown away and but little that is worth keeping when you run over your record for the past year. But far more important than your actual conduct (as in the case of the two very different gentlemen, neither of whom cheats at cards) is the motive that inspired your conduct. If you are lucky you will perhaps find that you have done a certain number of good-natured things; you may have done some generous ones, but if you are wise, you will, before you let a faint smile of satisfaction steal over your mobile features, consider why you did them. You may have been good-natured out of kindness of heart; all congratulations if it is so; but you may find you have been good-natured out of laziness, in which case I venture to congratulate you again on having brought that fact home to yourself.... Indeed, this search for motive rather resembles what happens when you turn over a prettily marked piece of rock lying on the grass. It _may_ be all right, but sometimes you discover horrible creepy-crawlies below it, which, when disturbed, scud about in a disconcerting manner. Or again (which is more encouraging), you may come across an object--a piece of conduct, that is to say--which really makes you blush to look at it. But possibly, when you turn it over you may find that you really meant rather well, in spite of your deplorable behaviour. Hoard that encouragement, for you will want as much encouragement as you can possibly find if you intend to do your stock-taking honestly; otherwise, you will assuredly not have the spirit to go through with it. And when the stock-taking is done look at the total, which will certainly be very disappointing, without dismay, but with a sanguine hope that you will find a better show next year. Think it over well, and then dismiss the whole thing from your conscious mind. For to dwell too much on your stock-taking, or to take stock too often, produces a paralysing sort of self-consciousness. The man who sets his past failures continually before him is not likely to be much better in the future; while he who contemplates his past successes gets fat and inert with probably quite ill-founded complacency. One of the shrewdest philosophers who ever lived gives very sage advice on this point when he says: "And when he hath done all that is to be done, as far as he knoweth, let him think that he hath done nothing."... So we, who have not done one tithe of the things that we knew we ought to have done, will certainly have little excuse for thinking we have done something.