"C.S.Lewis. Mere christianity " - читать интересную книгу автора

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 willfind 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 do not 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 are 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 read some other book, for nothing I am going to say concerns
them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left:
I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not
preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else.
I am 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 would not wonder at
it - and who the dickens am I, anyway?
I am just the same. That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Law
of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it,
there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The
question at the moment is not 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 do not believe in decent behaviour, 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 of Law pressing
on us so - that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are 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.