Today these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and despera… - Edward Carpenter

Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact that these classes of actions were—or were thought to be—beneficial or injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear that this good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in the one case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the popular mind between what is really good or evil for the race and what is reputed to be so—the bolder spirits who try to separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own martyrdom.

Granting, I say that competition has hitherto been the universal law, the last word, of nature, still if only one man should stand up and say, "It shall be so no more," if he should say, "It is not the last word of my nature, and my acts and life declare that it is not," then that so-called law would be at an end.

Government and laws and police then fall into their places - the earth gives her own laws; Democracy just begins to open her eyes and peep! and the rabble of unfaithful bishops, priests, generals, landlords, capitalists, lawyers, kings, queens. patronisers and polite idlers goes scuttling down into general oblivion; faithfulness emerges, self-reliance, self-help, passionate comradeship.