Morality is the province of philosophical judgment, not of psychological
diagnosis. Moral judgment must be objective, i.e., based on perceivable,
demonstrable facts. A man’s moral character must be judged on the basis of his
actions, his statements and his conscious convictions—not on the basis of
inferences (usually, spurious) about his subconscious.
A man is not to be condemned or excused on the grounds of the state of his
subconscious. His psychological problems are his private concern which is not
to be paraded in public and not to be made a burden on innocent victims or a
hunting ground for poaching psychologizers. Morality demands that one treat and
judge men as responsible adults.
This means that one grants a man the respect of assuming that he is conscious
of what he says and does, and one judges his statements and actions
philosophically, i.e., as what they are—not psychologically, i.e., as leads or
clues to some secret, hidden, unconscious meaning. One neither speaks nor
listens to people in code.