The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

passion into some sensual irregularity. Such men
can forget their crime when there seems little
chance of detection, but when they are found out,
or in grave danger of being so, they wish they had
been more virtuous, and this wish may give them a
lively sense of the enormity of their sin. Closely
allied with this feeling is the fear of becoming an
outcast from the herd. A man who cheats at cards
or fails to pay his debts of honour has nothing
within himself by which to stand up against the
disapproval of the herd when he is found out. In
this he is unlike the religious innovator, the
anarchist, and the revolutionary, who all feel that,
whatever may be their fate in the present, the future
is with them and will honour them as much as they
are execrated in the present. These men, in spite of
the hostility of the herd, do not feel sinful, but the
man who entirely accepts the morality of the herd
while acting against it suffers great unhappiness
when he loses caste, and the fear of this disaster,
or the pain of it when it has happened, may easily
cause him to regard his acts themselves as sinful.