The adventure of being good

Here's something from G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades. The narrator and his friend Basil Grant are travelling on the top of a tram through the poor parts of London. They're commenting about the district and the fact, according to the narrator, "that there was civilization, that there was order, but that civilization only showed its morbidity, and order only its monotony."

Basil replies:
"I agree with you. I agree that they have to lve in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a fourth-rate civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the majority of people here are good people. And being good is an adventure far more violent and daring than sailing around the world."