MereChristianity: RIGHT AND WRONG AS A CLUE TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE "Some Objections"

 

2. Some Objections


      If they are  the foundation, I had better  stop to make that foundation

firm before I go  on. Some  of the letters I have had show-that a  good many

people  find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human  Nature,

or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behaviour is.


     For example, some people wrote to me saying,  "Isn't  what you call the

Moral Law simply  our herd instinct and  hasn't it been developed  just like

all  our other  instincts?" Now  I  do  not  deny that  we  may have a  herd

instinct: but that is not what I  mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it

feels like to be prompted by instinct-by mother love, or sexual instinct, or

the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act

in a certain way.  And,  of  course, we  sometimes do feel just that sort of

desire to  help another person:  and no doubt that desire is due to the herd

instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different  from feeling that

you ought to help  whether you want  to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for

help from a man in danger. You  will probably feel two  desires-one a desire

to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other  a desire to keep out of

danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside

you, in addition to these two  impulses, a  third thing which tells you that

you ought to follow the  impulse to help, and suppress  the  impulse  to run

away. Now this thing  that judges between  two instincts, that decides which

should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say

that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note

on  the piano and not another, is  itself  one of the notes on the keyboard.

The Moral Law tells us  the tune we have to  play: our instincts are  merely

the keys.


     Another  way of  seeing  that the  Moral Law is not simply  one of  our

instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in

a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger  of the

two must win. But at  those moments  when we are most conscious of the Moral

Law, it usually seems to be telling us  to  side with the weaker  of the two

impulses. You probably want  to be safe much more  than you want to help the

man who is drowning: but  the Moral Law tells you to help  him all the same.

And surely it often tells us to try to  make the right impulse stronger than

it naturally is? I mean, we often  feel  it  our duty to  stimulate the herd

instinct, by waking up our imaginations  and arousing our pity and so on, so

as to get up enough steam for doing the  right thing. But clearly we are not

acting from instinct  when we set about making an instinct stronger  than it

is. The thing that says to you,  "Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,"

cannot  itself be the herd instinct. The thing  that tells you which note on

the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.


     Here  is  a  third way  of seeing  it If the  Moral Law was one  of our

instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us  which

was always what we call "good,"  always  in agreement with the rule of right

behaviour. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law

may not sometimes tell  us to suppress, and none which it may  not sometimes

tell  us to encourage. It is  a mistake  to think that some of our impulses-

say mother love or patriotism-are good, and others, like sex or the fighting

instinct, are bad. All we mean is that  the occasions  on which the fighting

instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent

than  those  for  restraining  mother  love  or patriotism.  But  there  are

situations in which it is the duty  of a married man to encourage his sexual

impulse and of a soldier to encourage  the fighting instinct. There are also

occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or  a man's love for

his  own country  have to  be  suppressed or  they  will  lead to unfairness

towards other people's children or  countries. Strictly speaking,  there are

no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has

not got two kinds of  notes on it,  the "right" notes and the  "wrong" ones.

Every single note is right at one time  and wrong  at another. The Moral Law

is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes

a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the

instincts.


     By the  way,  this point  is of great  practical consequence. The  most

dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and

set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of

them  which will not  make  us  into devils if we  set it  up as an absolute

guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe,  but it is not.

If you leave out  justice  you  will  find yourself breaking agreements  and

faking evidence in trials "for the  sake of humanity," and become in the end

a cruel and treacherous man.


     Other  people wrote to me  saying, "Isn't  what you call the Moral  Law

just  a  social convention, something that is  put into us  by education?" I

think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are

usually taking it for granted  that if we have learned  a thing from parents

and teachers,  then  that thing must be merely  a  human invention. But,  of

course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A

child who grew  up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it

does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a  human convention,

something human  beings have  made up for  themselves and  might  have  made

different if they had  liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent

Behaviour  from parents  and teachers,  and  friends and books,  as we learn

everything else. But some of the things we learn are  mere conventions which

might have been  different-we  learn to keep to the left of the road, but it

might just  as  well  have been the rule to keep to the right-and  others of

them, like mathematics,  are real truths. The question is to which class the

Law of Human Nature belongs.


     There  are  two  reasons for  saying it belongs to the  same  class  as

mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there

are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those  of

another, the differences  are not  really very great-not nearly so  great as

most people imagine-and you can recognise  the same law running through them

all: whereas  mere conventions,  like  the  rule of the road or the kind  of

clothes  people  wear, may differ to  any extent. The other reason  is this.

When you think about these differences between  the morality  of  one people

and another, do you think that the morality of one  people is ever better or

worse than that of  another? Have any of  the changes been improvements?  If

not, then of course there could never be  any moral progress. Progress means

not just  changing, but changing for the better.  If  no set of  moral ideas

were truer or better  than any other, there would be no sense in  preferring

civilised  morality  to  savage  morality,  or  Christian  morality to  Nazi

morality. In  fact,  of course, we  all do believe that some  moralities are

better  than  others. We do believe  that some  of the people  who  tried to

change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or

Pioneers-people  who understood  morality  better than their neighbours did.

Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better

than  another, you  are, in fact,  measuring them both by a standard, saying

that one of them conforms to  that standard more nearly  than the other. But

the standard that measures two things  is  something  different from either.

You  are, in fact, comparing them  both with  some  Real Morality, admitting

that there is such a  thing  as a real  Right,  independent  of what  people

think, and that some  people's  ideas  get nearer  to  that real Right  than

others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer,  and those  of

the Nazis less true, there must  be something-some Real Morality-for them to

be true  about. The  reason why your idea  of New York can be truer or  less

true than  mine is that New York is a real  place, existing quite apart from

what either of us thinks. If  when  each of  us said "New  York" each  meant

merely "The town I am  imagining in my own head,"  how could one of  us have

truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood

at all.  In the  same way, if  the Rule of  Decent  Behaviour  meant  simply

"whatever each nation happens to approve," there would be no sense in saying

that any  one nation had  ever been  more  correct in its  approval than any

other; no sense  in saying  that the world could ever grow morally better or

morally worse.


     I conclude then, that  though the differences between people's ideas of

Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of

Behaviour at  all,  yet the  things  we  are  bound  to  think  about  these

differences really prove just the opposite. But  one  word before I  end.  I

have  met  people  who  exaggerate  the  differences, because they  have not

distinguished  between  differences of  morality and differences  of  belief

about  facts. For example, one  man said  to  me, "Three  hundred  years ago

people in England were putting witches to death.  Was that what you call the

Rule of Human  Nature or Right Conduct?"  But  surely  the reason we do  not

execute  witches is  that  we  do  not believe there are such  things. If we

did-if  we really thought that there  were people going about  who had  sold

themselves  to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return

and were using  these powers to kill their neighbours or drive  them mad  or

bring bad weather,  surely we  would all agree that  if  anyone deserved the

death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. 

 

There  is  no difference ofmoral principle here: the difference is simply about

  matter of fact. It may

be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral

advance in  not  executing them  when you  do  not think they are there. You

would not call a  man humane  for ceasing  to  set  mousetraps if  he did so

because he believed there were no mice in the house.