"Life, then, is but the machinery by which character is formed. But in judging of a man's character we judge it as a whole, with all its paradoxes and contradictions.
One virtue does not make a good man or one vice an entirely bad man. The best men often have great faults, and the worst have their virtues. Sometimes we are surprised to find what good deeds a bad man will do, although we know that somehow they do not change his character.
Indeed, there are not a few good men who have graver faults than other men whom we know to be bad. And there are men whom we justly judged to be bad who have never, taking deed for deed, done a thing in itself so bad as have been done by a man who is justly judged to be good.
When we say, therefore, that the end of life is the formation of character and character is such a complex thing, how shall we judge it?
Is there any such standard by which all can be judged? There surely is. For the moral result that the multitude of influences and forces that act upon any human life produces can be seen in their effect upon the action of the will in one special direction. Does the will strive after what the man believes to be right, or does it deliberately and consciously choose what he believes to be wrong? The answer that his life gives to these questions will enable us to form a very good estimate of his character.
Basil W. Maturin
Christian Self Mastery
Catholic Priest who was drowned when a German U-boat sank the Lusitania in 1915.
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