Oh, I was wondering if that was the reason for your comment. I explained it anyway, in case someone else reads it who is not familiar with it. Yes, he was one of the tempters, which would have fit with my comment. Well put.

But, as in the original book, it is not straightforward, sometimes, what leads to salvation and what leads to damnation. There, as in the culture war, many who seem to have good intentions and proclaim themselves to be on the side of virtue end up doing reprehensible things. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hypocrisy, though, is a sure path that strays.

Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh please, please . .. all want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, “Oh, that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it”. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste ; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

We often try to present ourselves in ways that seem virtuous, for the sake of signaling virtue alone. We avoid doing what is truly virtuous, ethical, and moral as soon as it becomes inconvenient.