This Bait of Falsehood, aphorism 201, The Mechanics of Virtue, Matt Berry
201
This Bait of Falsehood: Some who display the purest form of integrity are only dealing with the crisis of an irretrievable loss of rank – whether or not that rank had been merely presumed or had been actually inherited through tradition. This type cannot consciously seek to recover the lost rank without suffering the unbearable humiliation of admitting to the demotion. Consequently, that which would immediately re-establish the rank (brute force, for example) does not and cannot exist within their equation. They require a new standard according to which it will be demonstrated that a demotion never occurred.
Their ends are hidden; mechanical means, forbidden. They now have the only remaining possibility of foisting a new standard ... by which a new identity will dominate ... something which does not really exist however. Indeed, the identity that does not really exist – yet must exist – creates a crisis for which and by which the higher standard too must exist. The righteous script plays itself out: “Man was born to be Equal, Just, Nonviolent, and Rational.”