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* 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
work.
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
be a disastrous mistake. 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
band wants it to play.
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.
