Below I share a passage that made a strong impression on me from the book The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. It’s at the beginning of the book, when Lord Henry explains to Dorian Grey why ‘all influence is immoral.’
Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
(page 17)
The idea that we should help everyone to ‘realise their nature perfectly,’ rather than enforce upon them our convictions, is an original one, and one I think we desperately need.
The rational arguments and moral incentives do not seem to make anyone change their behaviour, no matter how clear or obvious they are—and no matter how hard we shout them. I think helping people to recognise their meaning is the most effective strategy to pursue, as captured beautifully in the words of Lord Henry once again:
I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal1— to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be.
(page 17-18)
