We’ve seen that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they

should
behave in a certain way, and can’t really get rid of that feeling. We’ve also observed that
they do not in fact behave as they know they should. They know the moral law and they
break it.

If these ideas are the foundation, we need to make sure that it is firm before we move on.
Some people find it difficult to understand just what the moral law is. For example, some
people will say “Isn’t what you call the moral law just some kind of social instinct that we’ve
developed to help us survive?” Well, there may be something like a social instinct, but that
is not what I mean by the moral law. We all know what it means to feel compelled to do
something because of an instinct - things like the natural concern a mother has for her
children, or the sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want
or desire to act in a certain way. And of course we sometimes do feel that kind of strong
desire to help another person. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that
you ought to help whether you want to or not.

Suppose you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You’ll probably feel two desires -
one to give help, and another a desire to keep yourself out of danger - what we call the
instinct of self-preservation. But, you will also find inside yourself, in addition to these two
feelings, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help and
suppress the impulse to run away.

Now that thing which judges between two instincts, that decides which of them should be
encouraged, cannot itself be either of those two instincts. It’s something else. You might as
well say that a sheet of music which tells you to play one note at one moment and another
at a different moment is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The moral law tells us the
tune we have to play - our instincts are simply the keys.

Another way of seeing that that moral law is not simply one of our instincts is this: If two
instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in your mind except those two instincts,
obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most aware
of the moral law, it usually tells us to choose to follow the weaker of the two desires we feel.
You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning,
but the moral law tells you to help him anyway. And certainly it often tells us to try and
make the right desire stronger than it naturally is. I mean we often feel that we should try
and increase our desire to help other people by waking up our imaginations and arousing
our pity and so on. We do this so that we can build up enough steam to do the right thing.
But clearly we are not just acting from instinct when we work at making a desire stronger
than it is. The thing that the moral law says to you, “Your desire to help that man is asleep,
wake it up!” cannot simply be an instinct itself. The thing that tells you which note on the
piano needs to be played cannot be a note itself.

Here is another way of seeing this: If the moral law was just another one of our instincts, we
ought to be able to point to some impulses within us that were always “good” and in
agreement with right behavior. But the fact is, you cannot. There are none of our desires
which the moral law may not tell us at some time to suppress, and none that it may not at
another time tell us to encourage. It’s a mistake to think that some of our instincts like
motherly love or patriotism are good while others like the sexual instinct or fighting instinct
are bad. There are times when a mother’s love for her children or a person’s love for their
own people may have to be suppressed because it will lead to unfairness toward other
people’s children or nations. Strictly speaking, there are no such thing as good or bad
impulses. All of them have their place and time.

Think again of a piano. It doesn’t have two kinds of notes, the “right ones” and the “wrong
ones.” Every note is right at one time and wrong at another. The moral law is not any one
instinct or set of instincts, it’s something that makes a kind of tune - a tune we call goodness
- by directing our desires.

Other people think that what we call the moral law is just a creation of society or culture,
something put into us by training or education. But I think there is a misunderstanding here.
People who think this are usually taking for granted that if we have learned something from
parents or teachers, then that thing must be a human invention and nothing more. But, of
course, that’s not true. We all learn mathematics in school. A child who grew up on an
island all by himself would not understand math. But clearly this does not mean that the
multiplication tables or rules of geometry are simply a human invention, something that
human beings made up for themselves and could have made different if they wanted to.

I fully agree that we learn things about the moral law from parents and teachers, friends and
books, just as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are purely human
creations which might have been different - like which side of the road we are supposed to
drive on - and other things, like the rules of mathematics, are real truths that are not based
on human beings. The question is this: In which of those categories does the moral law
belong?

There are two reasons for saying that it belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first
is, as I said in the last chapter, though there are differences between the moral ideas of one
time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great - not nearly as
significant as most people imagine - and you can recognize the same basic law running
through them all. On the other hand, things that are purely human creations, like traffic laws
or the kinds of clothing people wear, can differ to any extent. They can be completely
different and even contradictory.

The other reason is this: When you think about these differences between the morality of
one group and another, do you think the morality of one people group is ever better or
worse than that of another? This is important, because if no set of moral ideas were truer or
better than any other, there would be no sense in saying that you prefer Christian morality
to the morality of the Nazis, or that it is better to love your neighbor than eat your neighbor.
But the fact is we all do believe that some moral systems are better than others. And we all
do believe that there have been some people who have tried to change the morality of their
culture - by ending slavery and so on - because they understood true morality better than
others in their time did. But there could be no such thing as moral progress unless there
were some true standard toward which we can move.

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas is better than another you are measuring
them both by a standard. You are saying that one of them matches the standard more
closely than the other. But the standard that measures two things is different from either one
of those two things. When you do this you are trying to compare them both with some Real
Morality, and you are admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right. You’re admitting
that there is a Real Right that is independent of what people may think and that some ideas
get closer to the Real Right than others.

Or, let’s put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer and those of the Nazis can be less
true, there must be something - some real morality - for them to be true about. The reason
why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than my idea of New York is that New
York is a real place. It’s a real place that exists apart from what either you or I think. If when
each of us said “New York” we simply meant “The town I am imagining in my own head,”
how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would just be no question of
true or false at all. In the same way, if the moral law, ideas of good and evil simply meant
“whatever each culture happens to approve or accept,” there would be no sense in saying
that any one culture had ever been more correct in what it accepted or allowed than
another. There would be no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or
worse or that anything was right or wrong at all.

So then, although the differences between peoples ideas of right and wrong might make
you suspect there is no real true moral standard, the opposite is actually the case. The way
that we think about these differences really proves just the opposite, that we understand at
some level that there really is a true standard of good and evil beyond human opinion and
above the human race.

One more point before I end. I’ve met people who exaggerate the differences between
moral systems because they don’t take into consideration differences in beliefs about facts.
For example, one man said to me “Three hundred years ago people in England were
putting witches to death. Is that what you would call an expression of the moral law? See,
our moral principles do change greatly over time.” But this man is very mistaken. Certainly
the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we
really did - if we really thought that there were people who had sold themselves to the devil
and received supernatural powers and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or
curse them, certainly we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, it would
be them. There is no difference of moral principle here. The difference is simply about
matters of fact. You could argue that it is a great advance in knowledge not to believe in
witches, but there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think that
they are there. You would not call a man kind for ceasing to set mouse-traps if he did this
because he believed there were no mice in the house.
_____________________________________________

1. In the first part of this chapter Lewis deals with the idea that the moral law is simply some
set of social instincts that we’ve developed to help us survive. He admits that there may be
some kind of social instinct that gives us a desire to help others in need, but notes that
feeling a desire to help is different from another kind of feeling. What does he say that it is
different than?

Feeling the desire to help, having the instinct to help, is very different from being ought to
help, which is the innate understanding that helping is good.

2. The author gives the example of hearing a cry for help from a man in danger. When you
hear it he says you will experience two feelings and then a third thing. What are the two
things you will feel and the third thing he mentions?

You will feel the instinct of self preservation, which makes you want to save yourself from
danger, the desire to help, which makes you want to go help, and then have the feeling to
choose the instinct to help over the instinct of self preservation.

3. Over the next few paragraphs Lewis offers several reasons why this third thing that you
feel can’t just be an instinct itself - it has to be something else. Do your best to state in a
couple of these reasons.

You want to be safe rather than be a hero to save a drowning person, but you will still feel
that you need to save that man and you will probably save that man. Often the two
instincts are in opposition with one of them winning, but the weaker instinct is often
supported by a mysterious sense that it is the right choice. If the moral sense was just
another instinct, then one would be able to know things that are true right when done, but
we do not know that and rather our moral compass often shifts between situations.
4. According to the author, other people think that what we call the moral law is just a
creation of society or culture, something that is put into us by training or education.
However, what mistake are people making when they think about these things?

They are thinking that moral knowledge is a learned quality of human creation. But
this is not true as all people are prone to the understanding of moral law but have
differing perspectives regarding the choices all people make especially when looking
through it in a moral aspect. It can be educated, but it is not created as it is something
that innately exists in the world

5. What example does Lewis give of something that comes to us through education but is
not a human invention?
Mathematics.

6. Lewis says that he fully agrees that we learn things about the moral law from parents
and teachers, friends and books, just as we learn everything else. However, according to
him, there are two different kinds of things that we learn in this way. What are the two kinds
of things or two categories he is talking about?
A learned category where is an educated aspect of human living, and that it is an innate but
created aspect (by humans) of human living.

7. The author says there are two reasons for believing that the moral law belongs in the
same category as something like mathematics (that is, it is not a human invention but is real
truth that is not based on human beings) What, briefly, are those two reasons?

You can recognize the same basic law running through them all. Because mathematics is
not a created subject and neither is the law of morals.

Since we can differentiate between levels of morality we must be basing it off some high
standard of morality.
8. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas is better than another what are you
doing? What are admitting when you do this?

That we have a set of high moral standards that we hold to ourselves, that we hold in a
certain value to compare between other moral standards. This means that there is a
moral law that runs through all humans as we all are silently afflicted with the high
moral standards that we all have.

9. Lewis give the example of two men thinking about New York. Why is it possible to say
that one man’s idea of New York can be truer or less true than another man’s idea of New
York?

It is because the city actually exists in the real world, which means that it has a set
standard which defines how correct a description of newyork is because it can be judged
depending on how accurate each is.
10. The differences between peoples ideas of right and wrong might make you suspect
there is no real true moral standard, but, says Lewis, the opposite is actually the case. The
way that we think about these differences really proves that we understand what?

That we understand some level of a true standard of good and evil beyond human opinion.

11. At the end of the chapter the author refers to something someone said to him about the
fact that people used to put witches to death. The man was trying to make the point that
this proves that a great change has taken place in our moral principles. But, according to
Lewis, the man is making a mistake: What has really happened over the years is not a
huge change in moral principles but a different kind of change. Explain this.

The kind of change that happened was what we expected as the concept of evil, since
we thought that witches were evil, it was morally correct to put down evil as that is
instilled into us. But since we no longer believe that witches exist or are evil we no
longer have the jurisdiction to put down witches as they are not evil. Therefore, our
concept of morally correct things (disputing evil) is still maintained, but the subject of
this correction changes with our beliefs.