* Book III. Christian Behaviour
1. The Three Parts Of Morality
There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God
was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was "The sort of
person who is always snooping round to see if anyone is enjoying himself and
then trying to stop it." And I am afraid that is the sort of idea that the
word Morality raises in a good many people's minds: something that
interferes, something that stops you having a good time. In reality, moral
rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is
there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of
that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly
interfering with our natural inclinations. When you are being taught how to
use any machine, the instructor keeps on saying, "No, don't do it like
that," because, of course, there are all sorts of things that look all right
and seem to you the natural way of treating the machine, but do not really
Some people prefer to talk about moral "ideals" rather than moral rules
and about moral "idealism" rather than moral obedience. Now it is, of
course, quite true that moral perfection is an "ideal" in the sense that we
cannot achieve it. In that sense every kind of perfection is, for us humans,
an ideal; we cannot succeed in being perfect car drivers or perfect tennis
players or in drawing perfectly straight lines. But there is another sense
in which it is very misleading to call moral perfection an ideal. When a man
says that a certain woman, or house, or ship, or garden is "his ideal" he
does not mean (unless he is rather a fool) that everyone else ought to have
the same ideal. In such matters we are entitled to have different tastes
and, therefore, different ideals. But it is dangerous to describe a man who
tries very hard to keep the moral law as a "man of high ideals," because
this might lead you to think that moral perfection was a private taste of
his own and that the rest of us were not called on to share it. This would
Perfect behaviour may be as unattainable as perfect
gear-changing when we drive; but it is a necessary ideal prescribed for all
men by the very nature of the human machine just as perfect gear-changing is
an ideal prescribed for all drivers by the very nature of cars. And it would
be even more dangerous to think of oneself as a person "of high ideals"
because one is trying to tell no lies at all (instead of only a few lies) or
never to commit adultery (instead of committing it only seldom) or not to be
a bully (instead of being only a moderate bully). It might lead you to
become a prig and to think you were rather a special person who deserved to
be congratulated on his "idealism." In reality you might just as well expect
to be congratulated because, whenever you do a sum, you try to get it quite
right. To be sure, perfect arithmetic is "an ideal"; you will certainly make
some mistakes in some calculations. But there is nothing very fine about
trying to be quite accurate at each step in each sum. It would be idiotic
not to try; for every mistake is going to cause you trouble later on. In the
same way every moral failure is going to cause trouble, probably to others
and certainly to yourself. By talking about rules and obedience instead of
"ideals" and "idealism" we help to remind ourselves of these facts.
Now let us go a step further. There are two ways in which the human
machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one
another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by
cheating or bullying. The other is when things go wrong inside the
individual-when the different parts of him (his different faculties and
desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another. You can
get the idea plain if you think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in
formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the
ships do not collide and get in one another's way; and, secondly, if each
ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact,
you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships
keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy very long. On the
other hand, if their steering gears are out of order they will not be able
to avoid collisions. Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a
tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player's individual
instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so
as to combine with all the others.
But there is one thing we have not yet taken into account. We have not
asked where the fleet is trying to get to, or what piece of music the band
is trying to play. The instruments might be all in tune and might all come
in at the right moment, but even so the performance would not be a success
if they had been engaged to provide dance music and actually played nothing
but Dead Marches. And however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a
failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta.
Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with
fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be
called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly,
with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for:
what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the
You may have noticed that modern people are nearly always thinking
about the first thing and forgetting the other two. When people say in the
newspapers that we are striving for Christian moral standards, they usually
mean that we are striving for kindness and fair play between nations, and
classes, and individuals; that is, they are thinking only of the first
thing. When a man says about something he wants to do, "It can't be wrong
because it doesn't do anyone else any harm," he is thinking only of the
first thing. He is thinking it does not matter what his ship is like inside
provided that he does not run into the next ship. And it is quite natural,
when we start thinking about morality, to begin with the first thing, with
social relations. For one thing, the results of bad morality in that sphere
are so obvious and press on us every day: war and poverty and graft and lies
and shoddy work. And also, as long as you stick to the first thing, there is
very little disagreement about morality. Almost all people at all times have
agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful
to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our
thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought
at all. Unless we go on to the second thing-the tidying up inside each human
being-we are only deceiving ourselves.
What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid
collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be
steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social
behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and
self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a
moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our
social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be
mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and
unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly.
It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that
go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies
they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new
system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot
have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing:
of morality inside the individual.
But I do not think we can stop there either. We are now getting to the
point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different
behaviour. And it would seem, at first sight, very sensible to stop before
we got there, and just carry on with those parts of morality that all
sensible people agree about. But can we? Remember that religion involves a
series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If
they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the right sailing of
the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set. For example, let
us go back to the man who says that a thing cannot be wrong unless it hurts
some other human being. He quite understands that he must not damage the
other ships in the convoy, but he honestly thinks that what he does to his
own ship is simply his own business. But does it not make a great difference
whether his ship is his own property or not? Does it not make a great
difference whether I am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body,
or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord? If somebody else made
me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should
not have if I simply belonged to myself.
Again, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going
to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a
good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to
live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously
if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are
gradually getting worse -so gradually that the increase in seventy years
will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million
years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct
technical term for what it would be. And immortality makes this other
difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between
totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then
a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand
years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true,
then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more
important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilisation,
compared with his, is only a moment.
It seems, then, that if we are to think about morality, we must think
of all three departments: relations between man and man: things inside each
man: and relations between man and the power that made him. We can all
cooperate in the first one. Disagreements begin with the second and become
serious with the third. It is in dealing with the third that the main
differences between Christian and non-Christian morality come out. For the
rest of this book I am going to assume the Christian point of view, and look
at the whole picture as it will be if Christianity is true.
2. The "Cardinal Virtues"
The previous section was originally composed to be given as a short
If you are allowed to talk for only ten minutes, pretty well everything
else has to be sacrificed to brevity. One of my chief reasons for dividing
morality up into three parts (with my picture of the ships sailing in
convoy) was that this seemed the shortest way of covering the ground. Here I
want to give some idea of another way in which the subject has been divided
by old writers, which was too long to use in my talk, but which is a very
According to this longer scheme there are seven "virtues." Four of them
are called "Cardinal" virtues, and the remaining three are called
"Theological" virtues. The "Cardinal" ones are those which all civilised
people recognise: the "Theological" are those which, as a rule, only
Christians know about. I shall deal with the Theological ones later on: at
present I am talking about the four Cardinal virtues. (The word "cardinal"
has nothing to do with "Cardinals" in the Roman Church. It comes from a
Latin word meaning "the hinge of a door." These were called "cardinal"
virtues because they are, as we should say, "pivotal.") They are PRUDENCE,
TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE, and FORTITUDE.
Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out
what you are doing and what is likely to come of it. Nowadays most people
hardly think of Prudence as one of the "virtues." In fact, because Christ
said we could only get into His world by being like children, many
Christians have the idea that, provided you are "good," it does not matter
being a fool. But that is a misunderstanding. In the first place, most
children show plenty of "prudence" about doing the things they are really
interested in, and think them out quite sensibly. In the second place, as
St, Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in
intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as
doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a
grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and
teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence
we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. The fact
that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try
to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not.
are thinking about is God Himself (for example, when you are praying) does
not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had
when you were a five-year-old. It is, of course, quite true that God will
not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have
been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very
little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper
motto is not "Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever," but "Be good,
sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can."
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you
are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on
something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But,
fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to
be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the
reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that
Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like
Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.
Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its
meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second
Cardinal virtue was christened "Temperance," it meant nothing of the sort.
Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it
meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a
mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers;
Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may
be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular
time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who
cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give
the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to
drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole
point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he
does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the
marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself
without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way.
An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for
special reasons-marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he
starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at
other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.
One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of
the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that
you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes
his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes
all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as
"intemperate" as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does
not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make
you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by
Justice means much more than the sort of thing that goes on in law
courts. It is the old name for everything we should now call "fairness"; it
includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all
that side of life. And Fortitude includes both kinds of courage-the kind
that faces danger as well as the kind that "sticks it" under pain. "Guts" is
perhaps the nearest modern English. You will notice, of course, that you
cannot practise any of the other virtues very long without bringing this one
There is one further point about the virtues that ought to be noticed.
There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action
and being a just or temperate man. Someone who is not a good tennis player
may now and then make a good shot. What you mean by a good player is the man
whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable
good shots that they can now be relied on. They have a certain tone or
quality which is there even when he is not playing, just as a
mathematician's mind has a certain habit and outlook which is there even
when he is not doing mathematics. In the same way a man who perseveres in
doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is
that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk
This distinction is important for the following reason. If we thought
only of the particular actions we might encourage three wrong ideas.
(1) We might think that, provided you did the right thing, it did not
matter how or why you did it-whether you did it willingly or unwillingly,
sulkily or cheerfully, through fear of public opinion or for its own sake.
But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to
build the internal quality or character called a "virtue," and it is this
quality or character that really matters. (If the bad tennis player hits
very hard, not because he sees that a very hard stroke is required, but
because he has lost his temper, his stroke might possibly, by luck, help him
to win that particular game; but it will not be helping him to become a
(2) We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules:
whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.
(3) We might think that the "virtues" were necessary only for this
present life-that in the other world we could stop being just because there
is nothing to quarrel about and stop being brave because there is no danger.
Now it is quite true that there will probably be no occasion for just or
courageous acts in the next world, but there will be every occasion for
being the sort of people that we can become only as the result of doing such
acts here. The point is not that God will refuse you admission to His
eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point
is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities
inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a "Heaven" for
them-that is, could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind
of happiness God intends for us.
3. Social Morality
The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and
man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new
morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by)
is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.
Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks
and cranks who do that. As Dr. Johnson said, "People need to be reminded
more often than they need to be instructed." The real job of every moral
teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple
principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse
back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back
and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk.
The second thing to get clear is that Christianity has not, and does
not profess to have, a detailed political programme for applying "Do as you
would be done by" to a particular society at a particular moment. It could
not have. It is meant for all men at all times and the particular programme
which suited one place or time would not suit another. And, anyhow, that is
not how Christianity works. When it tells you to feed the hungry it does not
give you lessons in cookery. When it tells you to read the Scriptures it
does not give you lessons in Hebrew and Greek, or even in English grammar.
It was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and
sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs,
and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will
put themselves at its disposal.
People say, "The Church ought to give us a lead." That is true if they
mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the
Church they ought to mean the whole body of practising Christians. And when
they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some
Christians- those who happen to have the right talents- should be economists
and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians,
and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to
putting "Do as you would be done by" into action. If that happened, and if
we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian
solution for our own social problems pretty quickly. But, of course, when
they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to
put out a political programme. That is silly. The clergy are those
particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained
and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to
live for ever: and we are asking them to do a quite different job for which
they have not been trained. The job is really on us, on the laymen. The
application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education,
must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just
as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists -not
from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and
novels in their spare time.
All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a
pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps
it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no
passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every
one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's work is to
produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and
then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to
be no "swank" or "side," no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian
society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always
insisting on obedience-obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of
us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am
afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly,
it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding
worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the
New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies."
If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I
think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its
economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, "advanced," but that
its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned-perhaps
even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it,
but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what
one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We
have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us
wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan
itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really
Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those
bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further: and that is
why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are
fighting for Christianity.
Now another point. There is one bit of advice given to us by the
ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the
great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic
system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money
at interest: and lending money at interest-what we call investment-is the
basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are
wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians
agreed in forbidding interest (or "usury" as they called it), they could not
foresee the joint stock company, and were only dunking of the private
moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said.
That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do
not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are
in or not This is where we want the Christian economist But I should not
have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilisations had
agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which
we have based our whole life.
One more point and I am done. In the passage where the New Testament
says that every one must work, it gives as a reason "in order that he may
have something to give to those in need." Charity-giving to the poor-is an
essential part of Christian morality: in the frightening parable of the
sheep and the goats it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some
people nowadays say that charity ought to be unnecessary and that instead of
giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were no
poor to give to. They may be quite right in saying that we ought to produce
that kind of society. But if anyone thinks that, as a consequence, you can
stop giving in the meantime, then he has parted company with all Christian
morality. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am
afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words,
if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the
standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably
giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I
should say they are too small There ought to be things we should like to do
and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. I am
speaking now of "charities" in the common way. Particular cases of distress
among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it
were, forces upon your notice, may demand much more: even to the crippling
and endangering of your own position. For many of us the great obstacle to
charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in
our fear-fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a temptation.
Sometimes our pride also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more
than we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and
less than we ought on those who really need our help.
And now, before I end, I am going to venture on a guess as to how this
section has affected any who have read it My guess is that there are some
Leftist people among them who are very angry that it has not gone further in
that direction, and some people of an opposite sort who are angry because
they think it has gone much too far. If so, that brings us right up against
the real snag in all this drawing up of blueprints for a Christian society.
Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what
Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from
Christianity for the views of our own party. We are looking for an ally
where we are offered either a Master or-a Judge. I am just the same. There
are bits in this section that I wanted to leave out. And that is why nothing
whatever is going to come of such talks unless we go a much longer way
round. A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really
want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I
may repeat "Do as you would be done by" till I am black in the face, but I
cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot
learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot
learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you,
we are driven on to something more inward -driven on from social matters to
religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home.
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