Notes & Quotes
Here are my notes for Chapter 2 (Book 1) of Mere Christianity. In this chapter, Jack outlines objections which might be raised in response to his assertion that there is a Moral Law of which we all fall short…
Objection #1: “Isn’t what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct?
There is a difference between instinct and the Moral Law.
“…feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not”
The Moral Law judges between instincts.
“…[there is] a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts…cannot itself be either of them…it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses…[and] often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger”
No instinct dominates, every instinct has its place.
“The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys…[a piano] has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones… There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage”
Objection #2: “Isn’t what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?”
Learning something doesn’t automatically make it a convention.
“…[this takes] for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. We all learned the multiplication table at school…but surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention…[which] might have made different if they had liked?”
Some things we learn are only convention, but others are not.
“…some of the things we learn are mere conventions…to keep to the left of the road…and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The question is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs”
The Law of Human Nature is real truths:
1. It is universal
“…the differences are…not nearly so great as most people imagine…mere conventions…may differ to any extent”
2. We compare moralities, thinking one better than another
“We do believe that some moralities are better than others… The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other…real Right, independent of what people think”
Objection #3: “Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?”
There is a difference between belief about facts and morality.
“You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house”
In India they don’t eat cows. In America we do. The morality is the same (don’t eat your ancestors), but the understanding is different (cows are not your ancestors)
Discussion Questions
1. How does Jack make a distinction between the Law of Human Nature and heard instinct?
2. How does Jack distinguish between social convention and real truth, like Mathematics? Why might we think that the Law of Human Nature fall into the latter category?
C.S. Lewis Doodle
There’s no doodle for this chapter! 🙁
