RIGHT, WRONG, GOODNESS, BADNESS PP/IH/B1/08
When I was a child great efforts were made to make me know the difference between right and wrong. It was, for example, wrong for me to steal lumps of sugar out of the dining room cupboard. (I now realise, by the way, that it would have been better if I hadn’t taken as much sugar as I did, because my parents were not rich, and there was not a great deal of sugar in the cupboard – but that, as a matter of fact, doesn’t affect the xxxxx purpose of these remarks.) All I knew was that it was wrong to steal sugar out of the cupboard. Later on I went to school. I went to a secondary school in a town some miles away, and had to have my lunch in a café. I gathered, after a time, that it was wrong to buy a fourpenny pork pie, instead of the meat and vegetables available, and then spend the rest of the money of xx a substance that I have not unfortunately seen recently, called strawberry ice. (I know now that it would have been better to have had the dinner, but that doesn’t affect the purpose of these remarks.) While at school I discovered that it was wrong to walk down a path in front of the school, to reach one block of classrooms from another. It was wrong for me; it was apparently quite right for prefects and the people who went about in gowns and black hats with tassels on, and thought that they were stirring in me a passionate interest in simultaneous equations and irregular verbs. It was right for them; it was so wrong for me that if I was seen doing it, I was taken into a study by a prefect and beaten. I did it very frequently, but when no one was about to see me, and as xxxxx throughout my childhood teachers seemed to think that I was very good, nothing happened. There were many other things that were wrong, most of which I did – but I shall not tell you the stories, as I am not really talking about my misspent childhood. I was told then, and people keep on telling me now, that when one does wrong things, one is involved in other things called inevitable
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consequences. This meant, xxxxI gathered then, and I am told now, that awful things result from doing wrong. But when I was a child, and even now – when I am still capable of doing a great many things that are wrong – nothing did happen. I am still waiting for the awful results of my being unable to give up smoking xxxx before the age of thirteen, unless they were that I started again at the age of eighteen, and can’t stop now.
There even seemed to me then, and there certainly seems to me now, something peculiar and unfortunate in this division of the things of life into right and wrong. Because something that may be unwise or have bad results in one situation may be the only thing to do in another. There was once a man who firmly believed that drinking anything containing alcohol was wrong; he regarded all those who drank beer as sinners, and those who drank wine as super-sinners; those who took brandy were simply unthinkable. xxxxxxxxxx He went for a holiday in Switzerland, and one day was lost on the mountains; he wandered about until he was tired,xxx and then lay down to die. But he was found; the monks of St. Bernard keep dogs, who find lost wanderers and offer them brandy from a flask tied round their necks. A dog found him, a monk followed the dog: the man was weak, almost too weak to move; but he spent his last energies in resisting the temptation to drink the offered brandy. A mad story, whose truth I do not guarantee. Let me tell you another, true this time, and far more serious.
Some time ago, in a magustrate’s court in the south of England, a man was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for disturbing the contents of dustbins; he had even stolen something from the dustbins. He stole food because his wife and family were starving. Now there is a law against disturbing XXX dustbins, and against stealing, even from dustbins; and many policemen worked hard to collect evidence of this horrible crime; solicitors prepared what is called a case; magistrates debated it; the man was sent to prison; the cause of right was vindicated; justice was satisfied; we now knew that it was wrong to steal from dustbins, and preumably right
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Some time ago, in a court of what is called justice, a man was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for disturbing the contents of dustbins. He had even stolen something from the dustbins. He stole food, because he had a wife and family who were starving. Now there is a law against disturbing dustbins, and against stealing things, even from dustbins; and justice, we learned, demanded that the man who wished to feed his children rather than see them starve should go to prison. Justice was apparently satisfied; a number of policeman had spent much valuable time investigating this man’s habit of taking things out of dustbins; solicitors composed what is known as a case; very responsible magistrates sat and considered xthis case; they established his guilt; they imposed his punishment. Justice was done. So much the worse, I feel, for justice. The right thing, passing by dustbins without removing the lid, was declared, enthroned, praised; the wrong thing, taking things out of dustbins, was declared wrong. The law, and it majesty, was vindicated; and everyone was in the end, I hope, thoroughly miserable.
The Latin language abounds in odd remarks, which people who have troubled to learn it frequently quote, wanting to do something that justifies the hours of labour they have spent on it. One of these remarks is often quoted: Fiat justitia, ruat caelum. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. When I was younger, I used to think it was an excellent remark. I now think that it is quite terrible, and that people who act on it cause endless misery.
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But this doesn’t mean that I think you can go out and do just as you like; I don’t think you ought. Some time ago I read a novel The Death of the Heart. In this novel a wife was very unkind to her husband. He did wrong; she did right. She divorced him, and his life was miserable ever afterwards. Another character discussing what she had done, says that she was trying to do good. No, says another, she was trying to do right. I don’t believe in doing right; I believe in doing good. And that is different.
I hope that you do not dislike anybody. But you obviously will like some people more than others. I want you to think about those people. If you like them, you want to do things that will make them happy, to avoid doing things that will make them miserable. You prefer to be happy rather than unhappy; and you think they do. You are right. This affection that you have for some others is the beginning of goodness. It leads you to care for them, to try to understand them, to try to help them. You may start by trying to get things for yourself; but when you like people, you try to get things for them. That is goodness. I want to ask you to extend it, to try to do the same things for all others, to try to be as considerate towards them as you are to those you like. I think that that is the only real way to live. As you go on doing it, you will find that it becomes easier, and that you eventually like the people you once disliked. You will then not want to hurt anybody, and want to help everybody. That is goodness.
Here we are in the world, all of us, trying to live, trying and hoping to be happy. We are all of us living, all of us hoping. But we have within us the power to hurt one another. We ought to try not to do it. Anything that causes misery is bad; what causes real happiness – or what, in a philosophical talk xxxxxxxxxcall joy, is good. Those who try to help and be kind are what I call tender and aware; those who don’t are what I call callous.
The world is divided between the callous and the aware. Please take sides.
If you come on my side, I can’t promise that you’ll always be happy. The good strive to make others happy even at the expense of ?????????????
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I can, I think promise that you will often be hurt and miserable – because those you like, and try to help may at times hurt you and even laugh at you – which is horrible. But I can promise that it’s worth while. Out of the suffering will come joy, and you will know that you are on the side of the angels, not of the devils. And you needn’t then worry any more about right and wrong; if you do what helps instead of hinders, do what makes some person happy instead of unhappy, you can leave right and wrong to those who seem to be interested. But notice I said some person – what matters is a person, a human being, an animal with a spirit, thinking, hoping, loving. That is all that matters – things like the state, the honour of this that and the other idea, don’t matter; they don’t exist; it is we who exist, a collection of human persons trying to live together in friendship; what helps is good, what hinders is bad. But was helps – our liking for one another, our love, will always go on, even though we at times as individuals fail. That is what we mean when we say that goodness is eternal.
I think that goodness would be eternal, in this sense, even if God did not exist. I am sure that it is eternal, because I believe God does exist. I cannot prove to you that he does, just as I cannot prove to you that anyone else exists. But during one or two phases of my life I seem to have met him, because he is a person, too. Some time ago I was going to do something not merely wrong, but really bad; at the time I thought that it was right and good. But somebody stopped me; I am sure that it was somebody, and not some thing.
You may think this is all nonsense; but it doesn’t matter. But just be careful, because you may one day meet him as well, if you are aware and not callous.