Mere Christianity - Book One - The Reality of the Law

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book One

 

RIGHT AND WRONG

AS A CLUE TO THE

MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE

  

 

 

3. The Reality of the Law

     I now  go  back to  what I  said at the end  of the first chapter, that
there  were two odd things  about  the human  race. First,  that  they  were
haunted by the idea of a sort of behaviour they ought  to practise, what you
might call fair play, or decency, or morality, or the Law of Nature. Second,
that they did not in fact do so.  Now  some of you  may  wonder why I called
this  odd. It  may  seem  to you  the most  natural  thing  in the world. In
particular, you may have thought I was rather  hard on the human race. After
all, you  may  say, what  I call breaking the Law  of Right  and Wrong or of
Nature, only means that people are  not perfect.  And why  on earth should I
expect them to be? That would be a good answer if what  I was  trying to  do
was to fix the exact amount of blame which is due to us for not behaving  as
we  expect  others to behave.  But  that  is not  my  job at  all. I am  not
concerned at present  with  blame; I am trying  to find out  truth. And from
that point  of view the very  idea  of something being imperfect, of its not
being what it ought to be, has certain consequences.

     If you take a thing  like a stone or a tree, it is what it is and there
seems no sense in saying it ought to have  been otherwise. Of course you may
say a stone is  "the wrong  shape" if  you want to use it for a  rockery, or
that a tree is a bad tree because it does not give  you as much shade as you
expected. But all you  mean is that the  stone or tree does not happen to be
convenient for  some purpose of  your own.  You  are not,  except as a joke,
blaming  them for that. You  really  know, that,  given the weather  and the
soil, the tree could not have been any different. What we, from our point of
view, call a "bad" tree is obeying  the laws of its nature just as much as a
"good" one.

     Now have you noticed what follows? It follows that what we usually call
the  laws  of nature-the  way  weather works on a tree for  example-may  not
really be laws  in  the strict sense, but only in a manner of speaking. When
you say that  falling stones always obey the law of gravitation, is not this
much the same as saying that the law only means "what stones always do"? You
do not really think that when a stone is  let go, it suddenly remembers that
it is under orders to fall to  the  ground.  You only mean that, in fact, it
does fall.  In other  words, you  cannot be sure that there is anything over
and  above the facts  themselves, any  law about  what  ought to happen,  as
distinct from what does happen. The laws  of nature, as applied to stones or
trees, may  only mean "what Nature, in fact, does."  But if  you turn to the
Law of Human Nature, the  Law of Decent Behaviour, it is a different matter.
That law certainly does not mean "what  human beings, in fact, do"; for as I
said before, many of them do not obey this law at all, and none of them obey
it completely. The law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them;
but  the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings  ought to do and do
not. In  other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes
in above and beyond the actual facts. You have the facts (how men do behave)
and you also have something else (how  they ought to behave). In the rest of
the  universe  there  need not  be  anything but the  facts.  Electrons  and
molecules behave in a certain way,  and certain results follow, and that may
be the whole story. (*) But  men behave in a certain way and that is not the
whole  story,  for  all  the  time  you  know  that  they  ought  to  behave
differently.

     ----
     [*] I do not think it is the whole story, as you will see later. I mean
that, as far ax the argument has gone up to date, it may be.
     ----

     Now this is really so peculiar that one is tempted to try to explain it
away. For instance, we might try to  make out that when you say  a man ought
not  to act as he does, you only mean the same  as when you say that a stone
is the wrong shape; namely, that what he is doing happens to be inconvenient
to you. But  that  is simply untrue. A man occupying the  corner seat in the
train because he got there first, and  a  man who slipped  into it  while my
back was  turned and removed  my bag, are both equally  inconvenient. But  I
blame the  second  man and  do  not blame  the first. I am not  angry-except
perhaps for a moment  before I come to my senses-with  a man who trips me up
by accident; I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up  even  if he does
not succeed. Yet the first has hurt me and the second has not. Sometimes the
behaviour  which I  call bad is not inconvenient to me  at all, but the very
opposite. In  war,  each  side may  find a  traitor  on the other side  very
useful. But though they use him and pay him they regard him as human vermin.
So you cannot say that what we call decent behaviour in others is simply the
behaviour that happens to  be useful to us. And  as for decent  behaviour in
ourselves,  I  suppose  it  is  pretty obvious  that it does  not  mean  the
behaviour  that  pays.  It means  things  like  being  content  with  thirty
shillings when you might have got three pounds,  doing school  work honestly
when it would be easy to cheat,  leaving a girl alone when you would like to
make love to  her, staying in  dangerous places when you could  go somewhere
safer, keeping promises  you would rather not  keep, and  telling  the truth
even when it makes you look a fool.

     Some people say that though decent conduct does not mean what pays each
particular  person  at a particular  moment,  still,  it means what pays the
human race as a whole; and that consequently there  is no mystery about  it.
Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see that you cannot have real
safety or happiness except in a  society  where every one plays fair, and it
is because  they see this that  they try to behave decently. Now, of course,
it  is  perfectly  true  that  safety  and  happiness  can  only  come  from
individuals, classes, and  nations being honest and fair  and  kind  to each
other. It  is  one  of  the  most important truths in  the world.  But as an
explanation of why we feel as we do about Right and Wrong it just misses the
point If we ask: "Why ought I to be unselfish?" and you reply "Because it is
good for society," we may  then  ask, "Why  should  I  care what's  good for
society except when it happens to pay me personally?" and then you will have
to say, "Because  you ought to  be unselfish"-which simply brings us back to
where we started. You are  saying what is true, but you are  not getting any
further. If a man asked what was the point of playing football, it would not
be much good saying "in order to  score goals," for trying to score goals is
the game itself, not  the reason for the game, and you would really  only be
saying that football was football-which is true,  but not worth  saying.  In
the same way, if a man asks what is the point of behaving decently, it is no
good replying, "in order to benefit society," for trying to benefit society,
in  other words  being unselfish (for "society" after all only  means "other
people"), is one of the  things  decent behaviour consists in; all  you  are
really saying is that decent behaviour  is  decent behaviour. You would have
said just  as much if you had stopped at  the  statement, "Men  ought to  be
unselfish."

     And that  is  where  I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish,  ought to be
fair. Not  that men are  unselfish, nor that  they like being unselfish, but
that  they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply
a fact about human behaviour in the same way  as the Law of  Gravitation is,
or may be, simply  a fact about how heavy objects behave. on the other hand,
it  is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most  of the
things we say  and think about men would be reduced  to  nonsense if we did.
And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men  to behave for
our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or  unfair is not exactly
the  same  as the  behaviour  we  find  inconvenient, and  may  even  be the
opposite. Consequently,  this  Rule  of Right and  Wrong,  or  Law  of Human
Nature, or whatever you  call  it, must somehow or other be a  real thing- a
thing  that is  really there, not made up by  ourselves. And yet it is not a
fact in the ordinary sense, in the  same way as  our  actual  behaviour is a
fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than
one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above
and beyond the  ordinary facts of men's  behaviour, and yet quite definitely
real-a real law, which none of as made, but which we find pressing on us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lewis concludes that the moral law (or natural law) is alive and active in human lives.

1. According to Lewis, the statement, "Men ought to behave decently in order to benefit society", is a redundant statement. Why?
2. Do you think the Law of Nature as described by Lewis is real and not made by man?
3. How is the law pressing on us?

 

 

 

 

• “The law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them; but the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought to do and do not do. In other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts. You have the facts (how men do behave) and you also have something else (how they ought to behave).
• This cannot easily be explained away. It is not true that right and wrong are what is convenient or inconvenient for me
  • “A man occupying the corner seat on the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient. But I blame the second man and do not blame the first.”
  • “I am not angry – except perhaps for a moment before I come to my senses – with a man who trips me up by accident; I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed. Yet the first man hurt me and the second has not.”
    • “Sometimes the behavior which I call bad is not inconvenient to me at all, but the very opposite. In war, each side may find a traitor on the other side very useful. But though they use him and pay him they regard him as human vermin.”
• What about decent behavior in ourselves? “It means things like....
  • “being content with thirty [dollars] when you might have got [three hundred],”
  • “doing school work honestly when it would be easy to cheat,”
  • “leaving a girl alone when you would like to make love to her,”
  • “staying in dangerous places when you would rather go somewhere safer,”
  • “keeping promises you would rather not keep, and”
  • “telling the truth even when it makes you look a fool.”
• Some people say that there is no mystery in decent conduct because it's good for the human race as a whole, so it's a reasonable byproduct of evolution. This leads into a circular and meaningless argument.
  • “if we ask: 'Why ought I to be unselfish?' and you reply 'Because it is good for society,' we may then ask, 'Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?' and then you will have to say, 'Because you out to be unselfish' – which simply brings you back to where we started.”
  • Football example: (modified for American football)
    • “What's the point in playing football?”
    • “To score touchdowns (and hit and tackle people)!”
    • Scoring touchdowns, hitting and tackling people is football, it is not a reason for playing football.
    • You've said that playing football is playing football, which while it is true is not worth saying.
• Conclusion: We can't escape or explain away the Law of Human Nature. “It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behavior, and yet quite definitely real – a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt 

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm