editor, Walter Hooper, believes this to have been written before Lewis's Abolition of Man (1943). see footnote p 47
59 it is often asserted in modern england that the world must return to christian ethics in order to preserve civilization, or even in order to save the human species from destruction. it is sometimes asserted in reply that christian ethics have been the greatest obstacle to human progress and that we must take care never to return to a bondage from which we have at last so fortunately escaped. I will not weary you with a repetition of the common arguments by which either view could be supported. my task is a different one. though I am myself a christian and even a dogmatic christian untinged with Modernist reservations and committed to supernaturalism in its full rigour, i fond myself quite unable to take my place beside the upholders of the first view. the whole debate between those who demand and those who deprecate a return to christian ethics, seems to me to involve presuppositions which i cannot allow.
60 the question between the contending parties has been wrongly put.
I must begin by distinguishing the senses in which we may speak of ethical systems and of the differences between them. we may, on the one hand, mean by an ethical system a body of ethical injunctions. in this sense, when we speak of Stoical Ethics we mean the system which strongly commends suicide (under certain conditions) and enjoins Apathy in the technical sense, the extinction of emotions; when we speak of Aristotelian ethics we mean the system which finds in Virtuous Pride or Magnanimity the virtue that presupposes and includes all other virtues; when we speak of christian ethics we mean the system that commands humility, forgiveness, and (in certain circumstances) martyrdom. the differences, from this point of view, are differences of content. but we also sometimes speak of Ethical Systems when we mean systematic analysis and explanations of our moral experience. thus the expression 'Kantian Ethics" signifies not primarily a body of commands - Kant did not differ remarkably from other men on the content of ethics - but the doctrine of the Categorical imperative. from this point of view Stoical Ethics is the system which defines moral behaviour by conformity to nature, or the whole, or Providence - terms almost interchangeable in Stoical thought: Aristotelian ethics is the system of eudaemonism: Christian ethics, the system which, whether by exalting Faith above Works, by asserting that love fulfils the Law, or by demanding Regeneration, makes duty a self-transcending concept and endeavours to escape from the region of mere morality.
it would of course be naive to suppose that there is no profound connection between an ethical system in the one sense and an ethical system in the other. the philosopher's
61 or theologian's theory of ethics arises out of the practical ethics he already holds and attempts to obey and again, the theory, once formed, reacts on his judgement of what ought to be done. that is a truth in no danger of being neglected by an age so steeped in historicism (note - one of the essays of this book) as ours. we are, if anything, too deeply imbued with the sense of period, too eager to trace a common spirit in the ethical practice and ethical theory, in the economics, institutions, art, dress and language of a society. it must, however, also be insisted that Ethical Systems in the one sense do not differ in a direct ratio to the difference of Ethical Systems in another. the number of actions about whose ethical quality a Stoic, an Aristotelian, a Thomist, a Kantian, and a Utilitarian would agree is, after all very large. the very act of studying diverse ethical theories, as theories, exaggerates the practical differences between them. while we are studying them from that point of view we naturally and, for that purpose, rightly seize on the marginal case where the theoretical difference goes with a contradiction between the injunctions, because it is the expedrimentum crucis. but the exaggeration useful in one inquiry must not be carried over into other inquiries.
when modern writers urge us to return or not to return, to Christian Ethics, I presume they mean christian ethics in our first sense; a body of injunctions, not a theory as to the origin, sanctions or ultimate significance. of those injunctions. if they do not mean that, then they should not talk about a return to christian ethics by simply about a return to christianity. i will at any rate assume that in this debate christian ethics means a body of injunctions.
62 and now my difficulties begin. a debate about the desirability of adopting christian ethics seems to proceed upon 2 presuppositions. 1. that christian ethics is one among several alternative bodies of injunctions, so clearly distinct from one another that the whole future of out species in this planet depends on our choice between them. 2. that we to whom the disputants address their pleadings, are for the moment standing outside all these systems in a sort of ethical vacuum, ready to enter which ever of them is most convincingly recommended to us. and it does not appear to me that either presupposition corresponds at all closely or sensitively to the reality.
consider with me for a moment the first presupposition. did christian ethics really enter the world as a novelty, a new, peculiar set of commands, to which a man could be in the strict sense CONVERTED? i say converted to the practical ethics; he could of course be converted to the christian faith, he could accept, not only as a novelty, but as a transcendent novelty, a mystery hidden from all eternity, the deity and resurrection of Jesus, the atonement, the forgiveness of sins. but these novelties themselves set a rigid limit to the novelty we can assume in the ethical injunctions. the convert accepted forgiveness of sins. but of sins against what law? some new law promulgated by the christians? but that is nonsensical. it would be the mockery of a tyrant to forgive a man for doing what had never been forbidden until the very moment at which the forgiveness was announced. the idea (at least in its grossest and most popular form) that christianity brought a new ethical code into the world is a grave error. if it had done so, then we should have to conclude that all who firs preached it wholly misunderstood their own message: for all of them, its Founder, His precursor, his apostles, came
63 demanding repentance and offering forgiveness, a demand and an offer both meaningless except on the assumption of a moral law already known and already broken.
it is far from my intention to deny that we find in christian ethics a deepening, an internalization, a few changes of emphasis, in the moral code. but only serious ignorance of jewish and pagan culture would lead anyone to the conclusion that it is a radically new thing. essentially, christianity is not the promulgation of a moral discovery. it is addressed only to penitents, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law. it offers forgiveness for having broken and supernatural help towards keeping, that law, and by so doing re-affirms it. a christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that Jesus uttered no command which had not been anticipated by the Rabbis - few, indeed, which cannot be paralleled in classical, ancient Egyptian, Ninevite, Babylonian, or Chinese texts. we have long recognized that truth with rejoicing. our faith is not pinned on a crank.
the second presupposition - that of an ethical vacuum in which we stand deciding what code we will adopt - is not quite so easily dealt with, but I believe it to be, in the long run, equally misleading. of course, historically or chronologically, a man need not be supposed to stand outside all ethical codes at the moment when you exhort
64 him to adopt christian ethics. a man who is attending one lecturer or one physician may be advised to exchange him for another. but he cannot come to a decision without first reaching a moment of indecision. there must be a point at which he feels himself attached to neither and weighs their rival merits. adherence to either is inconsistent with choice. in the same way, the demand that we should reassume, or refrain from reassuming, the christian code of ethics, invites us to enter a state in which we shall be unattached.
I am not, of course, denying that some men at some times can be in an ethical vacuum, adhering to no ethical system. but most of those who are in that state are by no means engaged in deciding what system they shall adopt, for such men do not often propose to adopt any. they are more often concerned with getting out of gaols or asylums. our question is whether the sort of men who urge us to return (or not to return) to christian ethics, or the sort of men who listen to such appeals, can enter the ethical vacuum which seems to be involved in the very conception of choosing an ethical code. and the best way of answering this question is (as sometimes happens) by asking another first. supposing we can enter the vacuum and view all ethical systems from the outside, what sort of motives can we then expect to find for entering any one of them?
one thing is immediately clear. we can have no ETHICAL (note - most capitalization, thruout is mine) motives for adopting any of these systems. it cannot, while we are in the vacuum, be our duty to emerge from it. an act of duty is an act of obedience to the moral law. but by definition we are standing outside all codes of moral law. a man with no ethical allegiance can have no ethical motive for adopting one if he had,it would prove that he was not really in the vacuum at all. how then does it come
65 about that men who talk as if we could stand outside all moralities and choose among them as a woman chooses a hat, nevertheless exhort us(and often in passionate tones) to make some one particular choice? they have a ready answer. almost invariably they recommend some code of ethics on the ground that it and it alone, will preserve civilization or the human race. what they seldom tell us is whether the preservation of the human race is itself a duty or whether they expect us to aim at it on some other ground.
now if it is a duty, then clearly those who exhort us to it are not themselves really in a moral vacuum, and do not seriously believe that we are in a moral vacuum. at the very least they accept and count on our accepting, one moral injunction. their moral code is, admittedly, singularly poor in content. its solitary command,compared with the richly articulated codes of Aristotle, Confucius, or Aquinas, suggests that it is a mere residuum; as the arts of certain savages suggest that they are the last vestige of a vanished civilization. but there is a profound difference between having a fanatical and narrow morality and having no morality at all. if they were really in a moral vacuum, when could they have derived the idea of even a single duty?
in order to evade the difficulty, it may be suggested that the preservation of our species is not a moral imperative but an end prescribed by Instinct. to this I reply, firstly, that it is very doubtful whether there is such an instinct; and secondly, that if there were, it would not do the work which those who invoke instinct in this context demand of it.
have we in fact such an instinct? we must here be careful about the meaning of the word. in english the
66 word INSTINCT is often loosely used for what ought rather to be called APPETITE; thus we speak of the sexual instinct. Instinct in this sense means AN IMPULSE WHICH APPEARS IN CONSCIOUSNESS AS DESIRE AND WHOSE FULFILLMENT IS MARKED BY PLEASURE.
that we have no instinct (in this sense) to preserve our species, seems to me self-evident. desire is directed to the concrete - this woman, this plate of soup, this glass of beer; but the preservation of the species is a high abstraction which does not even enter the mind of unreflective people and affects even cultured minds most at those times when they are least instinctive. but instinct is also and more properly, used to mean BEHAVIOUR AS IF FROM KNOWLEDGE. thus certain insects carry out complicated actions which have in fact the result that their eggs are hatched and their larvae nourished: and since (rightly or wrongly) we refuse to attribute conscious design and foreknowledge to the agent we say that it has acted 'by instinct'. what that means on the subjective side, how the matter appears, if it appears at all, to the insect, I suppose we do not know. t say, in this sense, that we have an instinct to preserve the human raced, would be to say that we find ourselves compelled, we know not how, to perform acts which in fact (though that was not our purpose) tend to its preservation. this seems very unlikely. what are these acts? and if they exist, what is the purpose of urging us to preserve the race by adopting (or avoiding) christian ethics? had not the job better be left to instinct?
yet again, instinct may be used to denote these strong impulses which are, lie the appetites, had to deny though they are not, like the appetites, directed to concrete physical pleasure. and this, I think, is what people really mean when they speak of an instinct to preserve the human race. they mean that we have a natural, unreflective, spontaneous
67 impulse to do this, as we have to preserve our own offspring. and here we are thrown back on the debatable evidence of introspection. I do not find that I have this impulse and i do not see evidence that other men have it. do not misunderstand me. I would not be thought a monster. i acknowledge the preservation of man as an end to which my own preservation and happiness are subordinate: what i deny is that that end has been prescribed to me by a powerful, spontaneous impulse. the truth seems to me to be that we have such an impulse to preserve our children and grandchildren, an impulse which progressively weakens as we carry our minds further and further into the abyss of future generations, and which, if left to its own spontaneous strength,soon dies out altogether. let me ask anyone in this audience who is a father whether he has a spontaneous impulse to sacrifice his own son for the human species in general. i am not asking whether he would so sacrifice his son. I am asking whether, if he did so, he would be obeying a spontaneous impulse. will not every father among you reply that if this sacrifice were demanded of him and if he made it, he would do so not in obedience to a natural impulse but in hard won defiance of it? such an act, no less that the immolation of oneself, would be a triumph over nature.
but let us leave that difficulty on one side. let us suppose, for purposes of argument, that there really is an 'instinct' (in whatever sense) to preserve civilization or the human race. our instincts are obviously in conflict. the satisfaction of one demands the denial of another. and obviously the instinct, if there is one, to preserve humanity, is the one of all others whose satisfaction is likely to entail the greatest frustration of my remaining instincts. my hunger and thirst, my sexual desires, my family affection
68 are all going to be interfered with. and remember, we are still supposed to be in the vacuum, outside all ethical systems. on what conceivable ground, in an ethical void, on the assumption that the preservation of the species is not a moral but a merely instinctive end, can i be asked to gratify my instinct for the preservation of the species by adopting a moral code? why should this instinct be preferred to all my others? it is certainly not my strongest. even if it were, why should I not fight against it as a dipsomaniac is exhorted to fight against his tyrannous desire? why do my advisers assume from the very outset, which argument, that this instinct should be given a dictatorship in my soul? let us not be cheated with words. it is no use to say that this is the deepest or highest or most fundamental or noblest of my instincts. such words either mean that it is my strongest instinct (which is false and would be no reason for obeying it even if it were true) or else conceal a surreptitious re-introduction of the ethical.
and in fact the ethical has been re-introduced. or, more accurately, it has never really been banished. the moral vacuum was from the outset a mere figment. those who expect us to adopt a moral code as a means to the preservation of the species have themselves already a moral code and tacitly assume that we have one too their starting point is a purely moral maxim THAT HUMANITY OUGHT TO BE PRESERVED. the introduction of instinct is futile. if you do not arrange our instincts in a hierarchy of comparative dignity, it is idle to tell us to obey instinct, for the instincts are at war. if you do, then you are arranging them in obedience to a moral principle , passing an ethical judgement upon them. if instinct is our only standard, no instinct is to be preferred to another: for each of them will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. those
69 who urge us to choose a moral code are already moralists. we may throw away the preposterous picture of a wholly unethical man confronted with a series of alternative codes and making his free choice between them. nothing of the kind occurs. when a man is wholly unethical he does not choose between ethical code. and those who say they are choosing between ethical codes are already assuming a code.
what, then, shall we say of the maxim which turns out to e present from the beginning - THAT HUMANITY OUGHT TO BE PRESERVED? where do we get it from? or, to be more concrete, where do I get it from? certainly, i can point to no moment in time at which i first embraced it. it is, so far as I can make out, a late and abstract generalization from all the moral teaching I have ever had. if I now wanted to find authority for it, I should have no need to appeal to my own religion. I could point to the confession of the righteous soul in the Egyptian Book of the Dead -'I have not slain men'. I could find in the Babylonian Hymn that he who meditates oppression will find his house overturned. I would find, nearer home in the Elder Edda that 'Man is man's delight'. I would find in Confucius that the people should first be multiplied, then enriched and then instructed. if I wanted the spirit of all these precepts generalized I could find in Locke that 'by the fundamental law of Nature Man is to be preserved as much as possible'.
thus from my point of view there is no particular mystery about this maxim. it is what I have been taught, explicitly and implicitly, by my nurse, my parents, my religion, by sages or poets from every culture of which I have any knowledge. to reach this maxim I have no need to choose one ethical code among many and excogitate impossible motives for adopting it. the difficulty would be
70 to find codes that contradict it. and when I had found them they would turn out to be, not radically different things, but codes in which the same principle is for some reason restricted or truncated: in which the preservation and perfection of Man shrinks to that of the tribe, the class, or the family or the nation. they could all be reached by mere subtraction from what seems to be the general code: they differ from it not as ox from man but as dwarf from man.
thus far as concerns myself. but where do those others get it from those others who claimed to e standing outside all ethical codes? surely there is no doubt about the answer. they found it where I found it. they hold it by inheritance and training from the general (if not strictly universal) human tradition. they would never have reached their solitary injunction if they had really begun in an ethical vacuum. they have trusted the general human tradition at least to the extent of taking over from it one maxim.
but of course in that tradition this maxim did not stand alone. i found beside it many other injunctions: special duties to parents and elders, special duties to my wife and child, duties of good faith and veracity, duties to the weak, the poor and the desolate (these latter not confined, as some think, to the Judaic-Christian texts. and for me, again, there is no difficulty. i accept all these commands, all on the same authority. but there is surely a great difficulty for those who retain one and desire to drop the rest? and now we come to the heart of our subject.
there are many people in the modern world who offer us, as they say, NEW MORALITIES. but as we have just seen there can be NO MORAL MOTIVE for entering a new morality unless that motive is borrowed from the traditional morality
71 which is neither christian nor pagan, neither Eastern nor Western, neither ancient nor modern, but general. the question then arises as to the reasonableness of taking one maxim and rejecting the rest. if the remaining maxims have no authority,
what is the authority of the one you have selected to retain?
if it has authority, why have the others no authority?
thus a scientific Humanist may urge us to get rid of what he might call our inherited Taboo morality and realize that the total exploitation of nature for the comfort and security of posterity is the sole end. his system clashes with mine, say, at the point were he demands the compulsory euthanasia of the aged or the unfit. but the duty of caring for posterity, on which he bases his whole system, has no other source than that same tradition which bids me honour my parents and do no murder (a prohibition I find in the Voluspa as well as in the Decalogue).
if, as he would have me believe,
I have been misled by the tradition when it taught me my duty to my parents,
how do I know it has not misled me equally in prescribing a duty to posterity?
again, we may have a fanatical Nationalist who tells me
to throw away my antiquated scruples about universal justice and benevolence
and adopt a system in which nothing but the wealth and power of my own country matters.
but the difficulty is the same.
I learned of a special duty to my own country in the same place where I also learned of a general duty to men as such.
if the tradition was wrong about the one duty, on what ground does the Nationalist ask me to believe that it was right about the other?
the Communist is in the same position. I may well agree with him that exploitation is an evil
and that those who do the work should reap the reward.
but I only believe this because I accept certain traditional notions of justice.
when he goes on to attack
72 JUSTICE as part of my BOURGEOIS ideology, he takes away the very ground on which I can reasonably be asked to accept his new communistic code.
let us very clearly understand that, in a certain sense, IT IS NO MORE POSSIBLE TO INVENT A NEW ETHICS THAN TO PLACE A NEW SUN IN THE SKY.
SOME PRECEPT FROM TRADITIONAL MORALITY ALWAYS HAS TO BE ASSUMED.
WE CAN NEVER START FROM A TABULA RASA (note -'original, pure state):
if we did , we should end, ethically speaking, with a tabula rasa. NEW MORALITIES CAN ONLY BED CONTRADICTIONS OR EXPANSIONS OF SOMETHING ALREADY GIVEN. and all the specifically modern attempts at new moralities are contractions. they proceed by retaining some traditional precepts and rejecting others: but the only real authority behind those which they retain is the very same authority which they flout in rejecting others. of course this inconsistency is concealed; usually, as we have seen, by a refusal to recognize the precepts that are retained as moral precepts at all.
but many other causes contribute to the concealment. as in the life of the individual so in that of a community, particular circumstances set a temporary excess of value on some one end. when we are in love, the beloved, when we are ill, health, when we are poor, money, when we are frightened, safety, seems the only thing worth having. hence he who speaks to a class, a nation or a culture, in the grip of some passion, will not find it difficult to insinuate into their minds the fatal idea of some one finite good which is worth achieving at all costs and building an eccentric ethical system on that foundation. it is, of course, no genuinely new system. whatever the chose goal may be, the idea that I should seek it for my class or culture or nation at the expense of my own personal satisfaction has no authority save that which it derives from traditional
73 morality. but in the emotion of the moment this is overlooked.
added to this, may we not recognize in modern thought a very serious exaggeration of the ethical differences between different cultures? the conception which dominates our thought is enshrined in the word IDEOLOGIES, in so far as that word suggests that the whole moral and philosophical outlook of a people can be explained without remainder in terms of their method of production, their economic organization and their geographical position. on that view, of course, differences and differences to any extent, are to be expected between ideologies as between languages and costumes. but is this what we actually find? much anthropology seems at first to encourage us to answer Yes. but if I may venture on an opinion in a field where I am by no means an expert, I would suggest that the appearance is somewhat illusory. it seems to me to result from a concentration on those very elements in each culture which are most variable (sexual practice and religious ritual) and also from a concentration on the savage. I have even found a tendency in some thinkers to treat the savage as the normal or archetypal man. but surely he is the exceptional man. it may indeed be tgrue that wse were all savages once, as it is certainly true that we were all babies once. but we do not treat as normal man the imbecile who remains in adult life what we all were (intellectually) in the cradle. the savage has had as many generations of ancestors as the civilized man: he is the man who, in the same number of centuries, either has not learned or has forgotten, what the rest of the human race know. I do not see why we should attach much significance to the diversity and eccentricity (themselves often exaggerated) of savage codes. and if we turn to civilized man, I claim that we shall find far fewer
differences of ethical injunction than is now popularly believed. in triumphant monotony the same indispensable platitudes will meet us in culture after culture. the idea that any of the new moralities now offered us would be simply one more addition to a variety already almost infinite, is not in accordance with the facts. we are not really justified in speaking of different moralities as we speak of different languages or different religions.
you will not suspect me of trying to reintroduce in its full Stoical or medieval rigour the doctrine of Natural Law. still less am I claiming as the source of this substantial ethical agreement anything like Intuition of Innate Ideas. Nor, Theist though I am, do I here put forward any surreptitious argument for Theism. my aim is more timid. it is even negative, I deny that we have any choice to make between clearly differentiated ethical systems. I deny that we have any power to make a new ethical system. I assert that wherever and whenever ethical discussion begins we find already before us an ethical code whose validity has to be assumed before we can even criticize it. for no ethical attack on any of the traditional precepts can be made except on the ground of some other traditional precept. you can attack the concept of justice because it interferes with the feeding of the masses, but you have taken the duty of feeding the masses from the world-wide code. you may exalt patriotism at the expense of mercy; but it was the old code that told you to love your country. you may vivisect your grandfather in order to deliver your grandchildren from cancer: but, take away traditional morality and why should you bother about your grandchildren?
out of these negatives, there springs a positive. men say 'how are we to act, what are we to teach our children, now that we are no longer christians? you see, gentlemen,
75 how I would answer that question. you are deceived in thinking that the morality of your father was based on christianity. on the contrary, christianity presupposed it. that morality stands exactly where it did; its basis has not been withdrawn for, in a sense, it never had a basis. the ultimate ethical injunctions have always been premises, never conclusions. Kant was perfectly right on that point at least: the imperative is categorical. unless the ethical is assumed from the outset, no argument will bring you to it.
in thus recalling men to traditional morality I am not of course maintaining that it will provide an answer to every particular moral problem with which we may be confronted. M. Sartre seems to me to be the victim of a curious misunderstanding when he rejects the conception of general moral rules on the ground that such rules may fail to apply clearly to all concrete problems of conduct. who could ever have supposed that by accepting a moral code we should be delivered from all questions of casuistry (def specious (apparently good or right though lacking real merit), deceptive or oversubtle reasoning, esp. in questions of morality? obviously it is moral codes that create questions of casuistry, just as the rules of chess create chess problems. the man without a moral code, like the animal, is free from moral problems. the man who has not learned to count is free from mathematical problems. a man asleep is free from all problems. within the framework of general human ethics problems will, of course, arise and will sometimes be solved wrongly. this possibility of error is simply the symptom that we are awake, not asleep, that we are men, not beasts or gods. if I were pressing on you a panacea, if I were recommending traditional ethics as a means to some end, I might be tempted to promise you the infallibility which I actually deny. but that, you see, is not my position. I send you back to your nurse and your father, to all the poets and sages and law givers, because,
76 in a sense, I hold that you are already there whether you recognize it or not: that there is really no ethical alternative: that those who urge us to adopt new moralities are only offering us the mutilated or expurgated text of a book which we already possess in the original manuscript. they all wish us to depend on them instead of on that original, and then to deprive us of our full humanity. their activity is in the long run always directed against our freedom.
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