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Our sense of right and wrong is firmly implanted in us. The laws of
morality, difficult as they often are to understand, have been written
down for our guidance in letters that never change."
"Never change? You might as well say, my dear Heard, that these cliffs
never change. The proof that the laws of good conduct change is this,
that if you were upright after the fashion of your great-grandfather
you would soon find yourself in the clutches of the law for branding a
slave, or putting a bullet through someone in a duel. I grant that
morality changes slowly. It changes slowly because the proletariat,
whose product it is, does the same. There is not much difference, I
imagine, between the crowds of old Babylon and new Shoreditch; hence
their peculiar emanations resemble each other more or less. That is why
morality compares so unfavourably with intellectuality, which is the
product of the upper sections of society and flashes out new lights
every moment. But even morality changes. The Spartans, a highly moral
people, thought it positively indecent not to steal.


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