Faraday to an unidentified correspondent   August 1861

August, 1861.

We may well regret such incidents¹. It is not that they are not to be expected, for they belong to our nature, but they ought to be repented. They are exceedingly unwholesome in a moral point of view, for they generally lead each one in private to justify themselves, and so foster a pharasaical condition of mind, and a growing tendency to judge others rather than ourselves. I speak from my own conviction. I know that the real root in such cases is not worth a thought; but, at the same time, I know that a vast mass of the uncomfort of life depends upon the tendency to criticise rather than to excuse or commend things which in one view or another deserve the latter as much as the former. We may well remember Hamlet, “If we all had our deserts, who would escape a whipping?”²