And even SIN becomes stale.
[VIII. HAWTHORNE'S "BLITHEDALE ROMANCE"]
No other book of Nathaniel Hawthorne is so deep, so dual, and so complete as The Scarlet Letter: this great allegory of the triumph of sin.
Sin is a queer thing. It isn't the breaking of divine commandments. It is the breaking of one's own integrity.
For instance, the sin in Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale's case was a sin because they did what they thought it wrong to do. If they had really wanted to be lovers, and if they had had the honest courage of their own passion, there would have been no sin: even had the desire been only momentary.
But if there had been no sin, they would have lost half the fun, or more, of the game.
It was this very doing of the thing that they themselves believed to be wrong, that constituted the chief charm of the act. Man invents sin, in order to enjoy the feeling of being naughty. Also, in order to shift the responsibility for his own acts. A Divine Father tells him what to do. And man is naughty and doesn't obey. And then shiveringly, ignoble man lets down his pants for a flogging.
If the Divine Father doesn't bring on the flogging, in this life, then Sinful Man shiveringly awaits his whipping in the afterlife.
Bah, the Divine Father, like so many other Crowned Heads, has abdicated his authority. Man can sin as much as he likes.
There is only one penalty: the loss of his own integrity. Man should never do the thing he believes to be wrong. Because if he does, he loses his own singleness, wholeness, natural honour.