But, if a mode of action which, though it be generally practised and approved, injures the individual and causes him to suffer, cannot be justified on the grounds of an obvious benefit to the community, then a small, sometimes an almost infinitesimal minority of independent thinkers will rise against the custom; they are not afraid of coming into violent conflict with generally accepted views; they defend the fundamental principle of Morality, namely, consideration for the individual, against the exception, namely, oppression of the individual for the ostensible good of the community; they brand as immoral what is generally accounted moral; they announce that the current acceptation of the goodness or badness of a certain order of actions must cease.
The intervention of such reformers always gives offence, and arouses anger which at times rises to murderous fury. But this wrathful indignation is just what makes a break in the automatic fashion in which the majority of average men act according to traditional custom; the attention of more and more minds is arrested, critically they examine the accepted moral law, they are penetrated first by the suspicion and finally by the clear conviction that it is contrary to the essence of Morality, and they swell the ranks of the innovators who inveigh against the tradition. The struggle lasts long and is carried on pitilessly. The preachers of the new Morality seem corrupt and criminal to the supporters of the old. They are persecuted and slandered and not seldom have to suffer martyrdom, but they always emerge victorious if their doctrine is in agreement with the logic of the fundamental principles of Moral law. That is the history of the abolition of human sacrifices, of the vendetta, of slavery, of legal torture, of religious coercion.
Whoever looks about him with open eyes will note that civilized men are at the moment adopting new ideas with regard to the operation of state omnipotence, to war, to the right of the economically strong to exploit others, to the rights of women, to sexual morality, to the penal system. The advocates of a new Morality must still put up with the most humiliating abuse. He who wishes to defend the individual from coercion by the state is an anarchist and deserves to be hanged or broken on the wheel. He who maintains that war is immoral belongs to the rabble of vagabonds who own no nationality, for whom no contempt is too deep and no punishment too severe. He who refuses a duel is a dishonoured coward, and thereby cuts himself off from decent society. He who recognizes woman's right to motherhood is a dastardly purveyor of opportunities for prostitution. He who attacks the present relation between Capital and Labour as a hypocritical continuation of slavery is an ignorant agitator or an enemy of society. He who would like to see the idea of punishment excluded from the law, as being retrograde and unscientific, and who wishes only the point of view of the defence of society to be recognized as valid, talks sentimental nonsense, disarms justice and places the community at large at the mercy of criminals.