Tag: inconsistency, labels, lies, lifestyle, pride, vanity

He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent… by exploiting his vanity. He can… enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a “deeper,” “spiritual” world within him which they can not understand. You see the idea – the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of same, a continual under-current of self-satisfaction… and that to cease to do so would be “priggish,” “intolerant,” and… “Puritanical.