# Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1628/Scruples

From The Saturday Review.
SCRUPLES.
There are some things of which we should have neither too much nor too little; and among these are scruples. Unscrupulous is a term of just reproach; the unscrupulous man is dangerous in whatever capacity we have to deal with him, but the man of scruples is not therefore desirable as such. He may be eligible and deserving, but we should like him better without his scruples, for nothing is a graver barrier in social matters than obtrusive scruples which we do not share. Scruples are essentially private things; when two people agree together in an objection or an opinion, we view it in another light, and probably call it something else. Scruples represent private judgment exercising itself in small matters; that is, they appear small to common sense or to prevalent public opinion, though they are large and pre-dominant to the scrupulous mind. Not that scruples are independent of the prevailing tone of thought in the world, but they are the means by which some persons take their share in it, and they constitute the originality of a certain class of intellect — they furnish an opportunity for that self-assertion which is a natural object with thinkers of every class and grade.
Of course virtue has scruples. The minuter duties of morality have, we may say, an equal obligation with the weightier matters of the law; but in one case public opinion is accepted as exponent and interpreter, while the scrupulous conscience owns no law but itself, and sees ​no further than the letter. Honesty of the straightforward social sort agrees that it is a sin to steal a pin, but it does as it would be done by; and, holding itself justified by general usage, it takes the pin on an emergency and does not call it stealing. The scrupulous person goes pinless at the cost of being a less competent and efficient member of the body politic, but is not the less confident and satisfied. The scruples which fairly bear the character of scrupulosity are those which warp the judgment and obscure the perception of the relative importance of things. The man who is governed by them may be a guide to himself, but he is no guide for others; his conscience and his reason are not on sufficiently good terms. And it may be observed that nobody can be scrupulous all round; a pet scruple often makes a clean sweep of collateral obligations. The scrupulous temper is liable to large and eccentric omissions where the conscience is off its guard. People cannot act as members of a family or a community whose notions of private duty cover all their view and engross their attention. We live in this world in many capacities, all imposing moral duties, of which common sense has to adjust the claims where they seem conflicting; but common sense, even candid and unselfish common sense, is despised and abhorred by the mind possessed by a scruple, or regulating itself by a code of scruples. The duties that cannot be reconciled, or will not fit in, are set aside — overlooked as not of obligation. We know of a clergyman who had a scruple against reading any of the words in italics which occurred in the lessons for the day. He simply passed them over as not dictated by inspiration. It was indifferent to him that he made nonsense of the Word of God, which it was his office to set forth; he saw one side of his duty so very plainly that he saw nothing else, and we need not say was utterly unpersuadable. Nor need scruples be of this absurd type to show an equal want of grasp of the leading idea. It would appear that the capacity for a large general view is never found in conjunction with this microscopic activity of conscience. All scruples are conscientious, and carry with them a sort of religious obligation. But it depends on the character how deep this goes. Many people scruple to play a rubber who will plunge into reckless speculation without a twinge. It was a conscientious scruple which induced Pepys, on receiving a letter and discerning money in it, to empty the letter before he read it, "that I might say I saw no money in the paper;" and this is only a type of the action of a great many scrupulous persons, who desire to profit by the consequences of a certain course of action without incurring the responsibility of it. And, short of this, scruples constantly stand in the way of an honest perception of right by stopping at the letter. A mind given to small scruples has the judgment in leading-strings, and often misses the flash of truth amid the minute questions which occupy it. Perhaps the most common form of hypocrisy is this self-deception.
But, on the other hand, it is no easy matter to settle what are scruples — that is, conscientious demurs about small things. What were treated as such at one time are afterwards discovered to be broad principles. Reformers are charged with scruples and unnecessary niceties, but the scrupulous temper which fastens naturally on minutiæ is not the reforming temper. The so-called scruples of some minds have founded sects and parties, and changed the face of society. It was quoted as an absurd scruple when Lady Huntingdon, then "queen of the Methodists," having got her daughter named lady of the bedchamber to the princesses, resigned the appointment, as she would not let her play cards on Sunday. Society would not apply this term to such an objection now. Real scruples, the growth of a certain habit of mind, are not catching, we suspect; they are characteristics, though circumstances may befriend and develop them. Yet every age has its own fashion of scruples. A formula which at one period everybody accepts without doubt or hesitation, at another suggests scruples at every turn — not the same, but fitting the temper of the objector. To himself they seem original, the birth of his own questioning intellect, and in fact with a family resemblance to his own mind; but the age is responsible for this particular form. Scruples he would have had ten, twenty, or fifty years ago, but not these particular scruples. Originality is but a relative term. It is much more original, for instance, in these days, to start a difficulty about eating chickens or rabbits till the eater is satisfied that the rule of the Apostolic Church has been observed as to the manner of their killing, than to have scruples about the Thirty-nine Articles; for, to most people, the first question has been settled ​for good and all, ages ago, the other is a habit of the day, and scruples are contagious.
Scruples that interfere with the easy flow of social intercourse, and induce a sense of enstrangement and incongruity, will always be equally unpopular. Scruples of dress, diet, diction, precision of statement, humanity, amusement, ultra-honesty, ultra-veracity, are of this class, as setting up a higher standard than the current one.