C.S. Lewis on Common Decency

But we have decided in our mind, the country shall be free again. Tonight, the BBC presents the first in a series of talks called Right and Wrong, a clue to the meaning of the universe, by C.S. Lewis. This talk is titled Common Decency. And now, Mr. Lewis. Good evening. Everyone has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant. But however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this. How do you like it if anyone did the same to you? That's my seat. I was there first. Leave him alone. He isn't doing you any harm. Why should you shove in first? Give me a bit of your orange. I gave you a bit of mine. Come on. You promised. People say things like that every day. educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour doesn't happen to please him, he is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. and the other man very seldom replies to hell with your standard nearly always he tries to make out that what he's been doing doesn't really go against the standard or that if it does there is some special excuse he pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first shouldn't keep it or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise it looks in fact very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of law or rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it about which they really agreed and they have if they hadn't they might of course fight like animals but they couldn't quarrel in the human sense of the word Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong, and there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what right and wrong are, just as there'd be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there are some agreement about the rules of football. Now this law or rule about right and wrong used to be called the law of nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the laws of nature, we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the law of right and wrong the law of nature, they really meant the law of human nature. The idea was that, just as falling stones are governed by the law of gravitation and chemicals by chemical laws, so the creature called man... also had his law with this great difference that the stone couldn't choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not but a man could choose either to obey the law of human nature or to disobey it they called it law of nature because they thought that everyone knew it by nature and didn't need to be taught it they didn't mean of course that you mightn't find an odd individual here and there who didn't know it just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune but taking the race as a whole they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to everyone and i believe they were right if they were not then all the things we say about the war are nonsense what is the sense in saying the enemy is in the wrong unless right is a real thing which the germans at bottom know as well as we do and ought to practise if they have no notion of what we mean by right and though we might still have to fight them we could no more blame them for that than for the colour of their hair i know that some people say the idea of a law of nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities but this is not true they have only had slightly different moralities just think what a quite different morality would mean think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him you might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to whether it was only your own family or your fellow-countrymen or every one but they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first selfishness has never been admired men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four but they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked but the most remarkable thing is this whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real right and wrong you will find the same man going back on this a moment later he may break his promise to you but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining it's not fair before you can say jack robinson a nation may say treaties don't matter but then next minute they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one but if treaties don't matter and if there is no such thing as right and wrong in other words if there is no law of nature What is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that whatever they say, they really know the law of nature, just like anyone else? It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real right and wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong, but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. now if we're agreed about that i go on to my next point which is this none of us are really keeping the law of nature if there are any exceptions among you i apologise to them they had much better switch to some other station for nothing i am going to say concerns them and now turning to the ordinary human beings who are left i hope you won't misunderstand what i am going to say i'm not preaching and heaven knows i don't pretend to be better than anyone else i'm only trying to call attention to a fact the fact that this year or this month or more likely this very day we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people there may be all sorts of excuses for us that time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired that slightly shady business about the money the one you have almost forgotten came when you were very hard up and what you promised to do for old so-and-so and have never done well you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be and as for your behaviour to your wife or husband or sister or brother if i knew how irritating they could be i wouldn't wonder at it and who the dickens am i anyway I'm just the same. That is to say, I don't succeed in keeping the law of nature very well. And the moment anyone tells me I'm not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment isn't whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, We believe in the law of nature. If we don't believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much, we feel the rule or law pressing on us so, that we cannot bear to face the fact that we're breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired, or worried, or hungry. We put our good temper down to ourselves. These, then, are the first two points I wanted to make tonight. First, that human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they don't in fact behave in that way. They know the law of nature. They break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Thank you. Into the night goes the singing, for on the morrow the Eisteddfod opens.

This talk is titled Common Decency. And now, Mr. Lewis. Good evening.

Everyone has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant. But however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this. How do you like it if anyone did the same to you?

That's my seat. I was there first. Leave him alone.

He isn't doing you any harm. Why should you shove in first? Give me a bit of your orange. I gave you a bit of mine. Come on.

You promised. People say things like that every day. educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour doesn't happen to please him, he is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. and the other man very seldom replies to hell with your standard nearly always he tries to make out that what he's been doing doesn't really go against the standard or that if it does there is some special excuse he pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first shouldn't keep it or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise it looks in fact very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of law or rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it about which they really agreed and they have if they hadn't they might of course fight like animals but they couldn't quarrel in the human sense of the word Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong, and there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what right and wrong are, just as there'd be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there are some agreement about the rules of football. Now this law or rule about right and wrong used to be called the law of nature.

Nowadays, when we talk of the laws of nature, we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the law of right and wrong the law of nature, they really meant the law of human nature. The idea was that, just as falling stones are governed by the law of gravitation and chemicals by chemical laws, so the creature called man...

also had his law with this great difference that the stone couldn't choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not but a man could choose either to obey the law of human nature or to disobey it they called it law of nature because they thought that everyone knew it by nature and didn't need to be taught it they didn't mean of course that you mightn't find an odd individual here and there who didn't know it just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune but taking the race as a whole they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to everyone and i believe they were right if they were not then all the things we say about the war are nonsense what is the sense in saying the enemy is in the wrong unless right is a real thing which the germans at bottom know as well as we do and ought to practise if they have no notion of what we mean by right and though we might still have to fight them we could no more blame them for that than for the colour of their hair i know that some people say the idea of a law of nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities but this is not true they have only had slightly different moralities just think what a quite different morality would mean think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him you might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to whether it was only your own family or your fellow-countrymen or every one but they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first selfishness has never been admired men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four but they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked but the most remarkable thing is this whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real right and wrong you will find the same man going back on this a moment later he may break his promise to you but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining it's not fair before you can say jack robinson a nation may say treaties don't matter but then next minute they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one but if treaties don't matter and if there is no such thing as right and wrong in other words if there is no law of nature What is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that whatever they say, they really know the law of nature, just like anyone else? It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real right and wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong, but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. now if we're agreed about that i go on to my next point which is this none of us are really keeping the law of nature if there are any exceptions among you i apologise to them they had much better switch to some other station for nothing i am going to say concerns them and now turning to the ordinary human beings who are left i hope you won't misunderstand what i am going to say i'm not preaching and heaven knows i don't pretend to be better than anyone else i'm only trying to call attention to a fact the fact that this year or this month or more likely this very day we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people there may be all sorts of excuses for us that time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired that slightly shady business about the money the one you have almost forgotten came when you were very hard up and what you promised to do for old so-and-so and have never done well you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be and as for your behaviour to your wife or husband or sister or brother if i knew how irritating they could be i wouldn't wonder at it and who the dickens am i anyway I'm just the same.

That is to say, I don't succeed in keeping the law of nature very well. And the moment anyone tells me I'm not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment isn't whether they are good excuses.

The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, We believe in the law of nature. If we don't believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much, we feel the rule or law pressing on us so, that we cannot bear to face the fact that we're breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.

For you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired, or worried, or hungry. We put our good temper down to ourselves.

These, then, are the first two points I wanted to make tonight. First, that human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they don't in fact behave in that way.

They know the law of nature. They break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Thank you. Into the night goes the singing, for on the morrow the Eisteddfod opens.

Transcript for:C.S. Lewis on Common Decency

Transcript for:
C.S. Lewis on Common Decency