¹ Others have taken a critical view of innocence, for instance Hampshire, Stuart in Innocence and ExperienceGoogle Scholar, and Johnson, Peter in Politics, Innocence and the Limits of GoodnessGoogle Scholar; however both are interested in the ability of an innocent to deal with politics, which is not my concern.

² Politics, Innocence and the Limits of Goodness, (New York & London: Routledge, 1988), 37, 39Google Scholar. Also see Hampshire, Stuart who explains that ‘innocence is to be understood as the reverse of worldly experience;’ Innocence and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 149Google Scholar. Both maintain that innocence precludes any participation in politics: ‘The morality of innocence is the morality of a people who are resigned to being impotent,’ writes Hampshire. Mistakenly, Hampshire cites the early Quakers as a group whose ‘conception of the good life is necessarily an innocent life.’ This shows a remarkable ignorance of Quaker history, which chronicles consistent willingness to protest against unjust policies; they defied the British injunction against non-conformist religions, actively worked against slavery in America, and actively protested against several wars. And for such political involvement many Quakers spent time in jail.

³ Johnson, , 10Google Scholar. I discuss Prince Myshkin of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot below.

⁴ The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1928), 237, 238.Google Scholar

⁵ Op. cit. 237, 240, 230, 240. Dostoyevsky attributes similar qualities to Prince Myshkin.

⁶ Op. cit. 234, 229.

⁷ Wittgenstein is reported to have distinguished between the innocence of a child, ‘an innocence which comes from a natural absence of temptation’ and ‘the innocence a man has fought for,’ of which only the latter is commendable; see Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 4Google Scholar. I think that by the ‘innocence that has been fought for’ Wittgenstein must mean refraining from some wrong that greatly tempts one, which is a different sense of innocence from the one I am discussing. The innocent is of course not tempted in the same way. Also I agree with Wittgenstein that the state of innocence is not morally commendable.

⁸ Dostoyevsky and Wordsworth have in common their affinity for the romantic tradition in literature; see Lagerspetz on Dostoyevsky's romanticism. They differ in other ways, e.g., Wordsworth was influenced by Neo-Platonism, while Dostoyevsky thought of himself as a realist. The compatibility of Dostoyevsky's realism and romanticism is discussed by Sven Linner in Dostoyevsky's Realism.

⁹ Dostoyevsky uses similar language about Prince Myshkin. I am much indebted to Lagerspetz', Olli ‘A Truly Perfect and Beautiful Man,’Google Scholar (unpublished) for insight into Dostoevsky's intentions and their significance.

¹⁰ Anhouil's, Jean play, The RehearsalGoogle Scholar vividly portrays the beauty as well as the fragility of innocence, its easy and regrettable loss.

¹¹ In a much-quoted passage from a letter, Dostoyevsky says he intended Myshkin to represent a ‘beautiful human being,’ but then says that the task is impossible: the positively beautiful is an ideal, ‘and neither we nor civilized Europe have as yet even remotely worked out their ideal.’ He continues that there is ‘only one positively beautiful character in the world, and this is Christ’ (Linner, , 93)Google Scholar. Yet one can argue that Christ was anything but unworldly, as his acquaintance with prostitutes and lepers and his connections among the prosperous show. Dostoyevsky seems here to confuse the purity of innocence with an ideal of virtue. Also see Lagerspetz.

¹² I use ‘virtue’ and ‘virtuous’ with misgivings. While they are often used to translate the Greek aretē, in modern idiomatic English they are not much used. Instead of ‘virtuous’ we say that someone is a good man, or a wonderful one. And these accord well with the Greek use of aretē, which meant ‘goodness’ or ‘excellence’ of its kind. The concept works here if not the translation of it in English.

¹³ For a discussion of the limitations of moral training, see Chapters 8 and 9 of my The Grammar of Justice.

¹⁴ This argument is contained in Chapter 4 of Ethics of an Artificial Person, and developed in ‘Moral Engagement.’

¹⁵ Johnson, Peter writes that innocents ‘behave well not from an astute recognition of the virtue of doing so, but because they are incapable of envisaging moral conduct in any other way … Innocence … implies a kind of ignorance, an absence of knowledge and experience’ (10).Google Scholar

¹⁶ The Age of Innocence, (New York: Macmillan, 1968); 23, 65, 7, 81, 145Google Scholar. Archer, in esteeming worldly sophistication, seems not to speak for Wharton, but he clearly expresses her concern about the innocent's lack of understanding.

¹⁷ Nicomachean Ethics, trans. SirRoss, David (Oxford University Press, 1980), I.3, 1095a; pp. 3–4Google Scholar. Aristotle thinks the problem is that the young are only interested in pursuing their passions, and thus unconcerned with knowledge.

¹⁸ I do not mean of course that Adam and Eve were pursuing only their passions, as Aristotle says the youths do.

¹⁹ It is curious that the story provides two accounts of the consequences of such transgression: first, their experience of shame and guilt and the loss of happy and spontaneous innocence, which is internal to their having erred. But second, they are punished, made to bear physical sufferings into the future: this seems gratuitous. The suffering of guilt and self-criticism seems to be suffering enough.

²⁰ I am grateful to Olli Lagerspetz and Göran Torrkulla for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.