Thus, there are situations in which charity requires me to exercise particular discretion lest I should perplex or repel others; in which, that is to say, the emphatic profession of my faith might act as an irritant to such persons around me as are neither firm believers nor perhaps very decided unbelievers, and embitter their opposition.

Love, then, may secondarily compel us to ponder the impression our behavior is likely to produce; but on no account must the thought of that impression substitute itself for the free unfolding of our own experience and thus automatically govern our conduct. We must never, from natural weakness, become dependent on the anticipated and often, in fact, merely imagined impression on others. This secondary, shadowy, and false aspect must not come to dominate objective reality to the point of making us unable to give adequate response to God or values because others might misconstrue it.

This automatic deformation of our own experience, this illegitimate dependence on the errors and delusions of others, has nothing in common with a conscious and superior consideration—sanctioned by our free personality—for our brethren of an infirm faith, which causes us to omit certain manifestations of our religious allegiance in the sense of an express sacrifice.

As we have said, this second form of human respect is an offspring not of pride but of a general weakness and an excessive receptivity to impressions. We can overcome it, too, however, by the spirit of a basic surrender to God. It depends on our free will whether we simply deliver ourselves to its compulsion or withstand it. By yielding to this tendency in our nature, we become more and more slaves.

On the other hand, if we combat it resolutely—if, again and again, we follow the spontaneous impetus of our experience, for the sake of God and in conscious disregard of our environment—we shall not fail gradually to free ourselves from the tyranny of that extraneous domination.

Only let its magic circle be pierced frequently (and with conscious design, not merely by accident owing to the intensity of our emotion) and it will ultimately fade away.

Pliability of views may hinder freedom

Close to this second form of human respect, we find a further type of unfreedom: that which results from too great a receptivity to outside influences as such. Certain people are inclined to become dependent in their inner lives on others simply because these are possessed of a more dynamic personality. A man typifying this kind of unfreedom will, for instance, rally to another’s opinion, not as a result of his having been convinced of its objective truth, but just because it has been set forth with an impressive vigor.

After a time, it is true, when his contact with the person superior in dynamism has ceased, he will very probably dismiss that opinion again. But, for a while, another’s view of the subject in question has overlain, in his mind, his own; and the same thing will continue to happen, in regard to other alien opinions and under the impact of other vigorous personalities.