I very recently read a phrase someplace, online, in an articles–who knows–but the gist of the point was something along the lines of this:
“A poor man cannot adequately test his morals unless he can afford his vices.”
Ok, I’m way, way off the quote. The quote was elegant and succinct. But the point was something like “do not mistake a poor man as moral when really he cannot afford his vices.”
I have a pet theory that celebrities and generally powerful, famous/beautiful people have marriages fail or end in scandal because of alllllllll the additional attention and potential hitting-on. A beautiful actress or a famous politician will have more temptations thrown at them than, you know…normal people.
I believe Professor Henry Higgins says something to this effect with regard to Eliza Doolittle’s father (a garbage man) in Pygmalion. Maybe this is what you’re thinking of.
Well, then, how about Nietzsche? “Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.”
It all comes down to opportunity, man. Some guys are put into a position where they have to say no to beautiful women, and that is hard to do. Some guys are never put in that position, And that’s way fuckin’ easier.
These seem to me to be two different, nearly opposite meanings.
The first one might be paraphrased: “You shouldn’t call me good because I do not have the means to be bad.” (I don’t think this makes a lot of sense in terms of money, but in other terms such as the one Typo_Negative quoted, it does. A person without money can be as bad as he likes, if he doesn’t care about paying the rent or supporting a family. Hence the trope of the breadwinner pissing away their income by drinking and gambling etc. And if they’re on welfare, they’re bad by pissing away the welfare checks. Of course as a matter of scale, rich people can do a lot more damage to others than poor people can.)
The second one might be paraphrased: “You shouldn’t call me bad because I do not have the means to be good.” That is, I can’t survive if I follow the rules of morality. I have to steal, or live on my daughter’s good looks, to eat.
Ah, but Doolittle has never had either the means to or a reason for questioning his morals (or lack of them). So long as he’s dirt poor, it matters not to him how he ekes out a living. (How could things possibly get worse?) But the moment he comes into money, he finds (for whatever reason) that he must test (review) his morals. Sure, he can now afford all the vices he wants (e.g., drinking, whoring, sponging off others). But he chooses not to indulge because money has made him a different man.
Actually not. I’ve been reading the play (it’s on Gutenberg). You wouldn’t get such simplistic moralising from George Bernard Shaw.
Doolittle doesn’t become more moral at all when he becomes wealthy. It’s other people making demands on him that bothers him.
Spoilered for length - click to see extract
DOOLITTLE. … It’s making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It’s a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it’s a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I’m not a healthy man and can’t live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I’m not let do a hand’s turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn’t a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn’t speak to me. Now I’ve fifty, and not a decent week’s wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Don’t you be anxious: I bet she’s on my doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasn’t respectable. And the next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I’ll have to learn to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English. That’s where you’ll come in; and I daresay that’s what you done it for.
MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn’t that so, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. I believe so.
DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That’s the tragedy of it, ma’am. It’s easy to say chuck it; but I haven’t the nerve. Which one of us has? We’re all intimidated. Intimidated, ma’am: that’s what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don’t know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper’s uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the expression, ma’am: you’d use it yourself if you had my provocation). They’ve got you every way you turn: it’s a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven’t the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that’s what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I’ll look on helpless, and envy them. And that’s what your son has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].
But he nevertheless succumbs to these demands, again “for whatever reasons.” Apparently he’s now concerned with what other people think about him, whereas he wasn’t before.
He was concerned about what different people thought. When he was in the gutter, no one in the gutter with him considered his behavior unusual or wrong (if he had put on airs of morality, his compatriots would have noticed and reacted to it) - and so he had no conflict with his neighbors (how Pickering felt about him was no big deal). Being rich puts him in a new neighborhood - and as uncomfortable as it makes him, he must put on new behavior to fit in as well among his new neighbors as he did among the old ones.