Mere Christianity – Book I – Chapter 3 (“The reality of the Law”)
Notes & Quotes
These are my notes for Chapter 3 of “Mere Christianity”. Here, Jack tries to penetrate the Law of Human Nature more deeply and explains why its presence and our disobedience to it is odd…
1. The fact that there is a Law of Human Nature and that we don’t always obey it is odd
(a) Some people questioned why he called it “odd”
(i) They said that it’s not odd, it only shows that humans are imperfect
(ii) …but Jack points out that the idea of something being imperfect is important
“…the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not being what it ought to be, has certain consequences”
(b) He asks whether, when you say that stones obey the Law of Gravity whether or not it’s the same thing as just saying what stones do.
“The laws of nature, as applied to stones or trees, may only mean ‘what Nature, in fact, does'”
(c) However, the Law of Human Nature tells us something different and this is odd, it is prescriptive, not descriptive…
“…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 have something else (how they ought to behave)”
2. Some will try to explain away the oddness…
(a) …by saying that when someone doesn’t act rightly he is simply being inconvenient to you
“…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 [for your rockery]; namely, that what he is doing happens to be inconvenient to you”
(i) However, we can have two identical inconveniences yet blame one while we might not blame another.
“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”
(ii) We can be angry even if we are not inconvenienced
“I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed”
(iii) We call some behaviour “bad” even if it is convenient to us!
“In war, each side may find a traitor on the other side very useful. But though they puse him and pay him they regard him as human vermin“
(iv) Our own “good” behaviour often is inconvenient!
“It means things like…doing school work honestly when it would be easy to cheat…staying in dangerous places when you would rather go somewhere safer, keeping promises you would rather not keep…”
(b) …by saying that “good” behaviour might not benefit us immediately, but benefits humanity as a whole
“…decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment…it means what pays the human race as a whole”
(i) It is true that safety and happiness is dependent upon societal cooperation
“…[we] see that you cannot have any 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”
(ii) However, it misses the point and results in circular reasoning:
Q. Why should we be unselfish?
A. For the good of society.
Q. Why should I care about society except where it affects me personally?
A. Because you ought to be unselfish
“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 is football – which is true, but not worth saying”
3. From all this we conclude that the Law of Human Nature is real and speaks to another kind of reality
“…the Law of Human Nature…[is] a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact …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…yet quite definitely real – a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us”
Discussion Questions
1. Since the Law of Nature is prescriptive, what does this tell us about the world?
C.S. Lewis Doogle
