ABSTRACT
In the good old Victorian days every well-conducted citizen was persuaded that he was perfectly virtuous, and that anyone who accused him of ever having an egoistic motive was a base slanderer. Nowadays, under the influence of Freud, many people have come to believe that not only others but even they themselves are capable of motives which a Victorian would not have praised. The phrases of self-righteousness have gone out of fashion. It is no longer the thing to protest about the purity of one’s own intentions and the extreme rectitude of one’s own behaviour; superficially, we have become much less proud of ourselves than we used to be.
