REPUGNANCE TO EVIL

The quick and instinctive shrinking from wrong and improper actions is one of the essential elements of good character.

We use the same word naan or naanam in Tamil to denote the repugnance to wrongdoing, which a good man feels as to describe the good woman's shrinking from immodesty.

Eating, covering oneself against the weather and the rest are common to all, but- the distinction of good men is the spontaneous repugnance to impropriety.

Even as life finds its abode in the body and separation from it means death, so is honour inseparably lodged in a sensitive conscience, without which it cannot but die.

This is a pregnant comparison. The well-developed and sensitive conscience of a good man has a strong attraction to what is right in thought, word and deed, even as living things have an instinctive and strong urge to preserve life. The pangs of death should be felt when anything dishonorable is done.

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