NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
THE HUMAN RACE is haunted by the idea of doing whatis right. In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewisdiscusses the fact that people are always referring to some standard of behavior that they expect other people to know about. People are always defending themselves by arguing that what they have been doing does not really go against that standard, or that they have some special excuse for violating it.
What they have in mind is a law of fair play or a rule of decent behavior. Different people use different labels for this law -- traditional morality or the Moral Law, the knowledge of right and wrong, or Virtue, or the Way. We choose to call it the Natural Law. This law is an obvious principle that not made up by humans but is for humans to observe. Lewis claims that all over the earth humans know about this law, and all over the earth they break it; he further claims that there is Something or Somebody According to Lewis, we find out more about God from Natural Law than from the universe in general, just as we find out more about a person by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he built. We cancel from Natural Law that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness.
However, the Natural Law does not give us any grounds for assuming that God is soft or indulgent. Natural Law obliges us to do the straight things matter how painful or dangerous or difficult it is to do. Natural Lewis hard: "It is as hard as nails" (Mere Christianity 23). This last sentence also appears as the central thought in Lewis's moving poem "Love. " In the first stanza he tells us how love is as wars tears; in the second, how it is as fierce as fire; in the third, how is as fresh as spring. And in the final stanza he tells us how love isas hard as nails. Love's as hard as nails, Love is nails; Blunt, thick, hammered throughThemedial nerve of One Who, having made us, knew The thing He had done, Seeing (with all that is) Our cross, and His. (Poems 123) In Lewis's first chronicle of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, this hardness of the love of God was predicted by the lion Aslan when he promised to save Edmund from the results of treachery.
Head "All shall by done. But it may be harder than you think" (104). When he and the White Witch discussed her claim on Edmund's life, she referred to the law of that universe as the Deep Magic. Aslan wouldnt consider going against the Deep Magic; instead, he gave himself to die Edmund's place, and the next morning came back to life. He explained to Susan that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a far deeper magic that she did not know. This deeper magic says that when a willing victim is killed in place of a traitor, death itself would start working backwards.
The deepest magic worked toward life and goodness. In Narnia, and in this world as well, if the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness all our efforts and hopes are doomed. But if the universe is ruled by perfect goodness, says Lewis, we are falling short of that goodness allah time; we are not good enough to consider ourselves allies of perfect goodness (Mere 4). In Narnia Edmund fell so far short of goodness that he finally realized with a shock of despair that he At the end of the chapter entitled "Right and Wrong As A Clue tothe Meaning of the Universe" in Mere Christianity, Lewis claimed that until people repent and want forgiveness, Christianity won't make sense. Christianity explains how God can be the impersonal mind behind the Natural Law and yet also be a Person. It tells us how, since we cannot meet the demands of the law, God Himself became a human being to save us from our failure.
Lewis was of course aware that the presence of natural and moral evil the world makes the governance of the world by absolute goodness seem questionable, to say the least. He understood Housman in his bitter complaint against "whatever brute and blackguard made the world. " But Lewisasks by what standard the creator is judged a blackguard. The very lament for Moral law or rejection of Moral Law itself implies a Moral Law. Lewis was deeply concerned about the fact that many people in this century are losing their belief in Natural Law. He spoke about this in the Riddell Memorial Lectures given at the University of Durham, published in In Abolition he used "the Tao" as a shorthand term for the Natural Law or First Principle. A clarification may be helpful.
The term " Tao" in the West is most often associated with Chinese Taoism. According to its scripture, the Tao Te Ching, the Tao (though ineffable) can best be described with words such as "the Flow, "they things change, "the Life, "the Source. " Its locus is first of all in nature. To follow the Tao is indeed to live morally, for it requires respect for the lowly and avoidance of oppression or pride. However, the Tao is ultimately a way of accepting what is, whether tending toward life or death. Confucianists see the locus of the Tao as first oral in human society, expressed primarily in the respect of inferiors for patriarchal superiors, the responsibility of superiors for inferiors, andthe subordination of the individual to the welfare of the group.
Neither of these uses quite corresponds to what Lewis seems to intend in Abolition. Perhaps the Chinese concept that comes closest to Lewis's apparent Lewis claimed in Abolition that until quite recent times everyone believed that objects could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence our contempt. It was assumed that some emotional reactions were more appropriate This conception is vividly represented in The Lion, The Witch andthe Wardrobe; Edmund had inappropriate emotional responses from theory beginning. His brother and sisters imagined pleasant creatures they would like to meet in the woods, and Edmund hoped for foxes; but Lewis changed Edmund's choice to snakes for readers of the Macmillan version in the United States.
In both versions, when the children met the wise old professor, Edmund laughed at his looks. When Edmund met the White Witch, his initial fear quickly turned to trust; and when she gave him a choice of foods, he stuffed himself with Turkish Delight candy. His attitude toward his sister Lucy was resentful and superior; he was even suspicious of the good Robin and Beaver who came to guide the children to safety. Instead of noticing the Beaver's house, he noticed the location of the Witch's castle in the distance. When the name Aslan was first spoken to the four children, theyll had wonderful feelings except Edmund; he had a sensation of mysterious horror. Later events would educate Edmund to respond as the others Lewis pointed out that according to Aristotle the aim of education, the foundation of ethics, was to make a pupil like and dislike what he ought.
According to Plato, we need to learn to feel pleasure at pleasant things, liking for likeable things, disgust for disgusting things, and hatred for hateful things. In early Hindu teaching righteousness and correctness correspondent knowing truth and reality. Psalm 119 says the law is "true. "The Hebrew word for truth here is "emeth, " meaning intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, and a firmness and dependability as solid as This meaning is reflected in the final book of Narnia, The Last Battle, where Lewis introduced a young man named Emeth who had grown up in an oppressive country where people worship the evil deity Tash. In spite of his upbringing, Emeth was a man of honor and honesty who sought what was good. He died worshipping Tash and found himself in the presence of Aslan instead. He responded with reverence and delight.
All that he thought he was doing for Tash could be counted as service to Aslan instead. He was one of Aslan's friends long before he knew it because he liked what was likeable and hated Lewis was alarmed by all the people in our day who deny that some things are inherently likeable, debunking traditional morality and the Natural Law, thinking that there can be innovation in values. Some of them try to substitute necessity, progress or efficiency for goodness. But in fact necessity, progress or efficiency have to be related to a standard outside themselves to have any meaning. In many cases that standard will be, in the last analysis, the preservation of the person who thinks of himself as a moral innovator, or the preservation of the society of his choice. Such people direct their scepticism toward any values but their own, disparaging other values as " sentimental" (Abolition 19).
But Lewis's analysis shows that if Natural Law is sentimental, all values sentimental. No factual propositions such as "our society is indulger of extinction" can give any basis for a system of values; no observations of instinct such as "I want to prolong my life" given basis for a system of values. Why is our society valuable? Why is malice worth preserving? Only the Natural Law, asserting that human life is value, gives us a basis for "If nothing is self evident, nothing can be proved, " Lewisclaimed. "If nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all" (27). He means that if we do not accept Natural Law as self-evident and obligatory for its own sake, then all a person's conceptions of value fall away.
There are no values that are not derived from Natural Law. Anything that is judged good is such because of values in the Natural Law. The concept goodness Thus, modern innovations in ethics are just shreds of the old Natural Law, sometimes isolated and exaggerated. If any values at all are retained, the Natural Law is retained. According to Lewis, there never has been and never will be a radically new value or value system. The human mind has more power of inventing a new value than of inventing a new primary color.
Admittedly, there are imperfections and contradictions in historical manifestation and interpretations of Natural Law. Some reformers help us improve our perceptions of value. But only those who live by the Law knowit's spirit well enough to interpret it successfully. People who live outside the Natural Law have no grounds for criticizing Natural Law or anything else.
A few who reject it intend to take the logical next step as well: they intend to live without any values at all, disbelieving all values and choosing to live their lives according to their whims and fancies. Lewis's poem "The Country of the Blind, " published in Punching 1951, presents an image of people who have come to this. He describes what it would be like to live as a misfit with eyes in a country of eyeless people who no longer This poem tells of "hard" light shining on a whole nation of eyeless men who were unaware of their handicap. Blindness had come on gradually through many centuries. At some transitional stage a few citizens remained who still had eyes and vision after most people were blind. The blind were normal and up-to-date.
They used the same words that their ancestors housed, but no longer knew their meaning. They spoke of light still, meaning abstract thought. If one who could see tried to describe the grey dawn the stars or the green-sloped sea waves or the color of a lady's cheek, the blind majority insisted that they understood the feeling the sighted one expressed in metaphor. There was no way he could explain the facts them.
The blind ridiculed such a person who took figures of speech literally and concocted a myth about a kind of sense perception that no one has ever really had. If one thinks this is a far-fetched picture, Lewis concluded, one need only go to famous men today and try to talk to them about the truths of Natural Law which used to stand huge, awesome, and clear to the inner eye. One of those famous men is B. F. Skinner, who answered in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity that the abolition of the inner man and traditional morality is necessary so that science can prevent the abolition of the human race. Lewis had already exclaimed in Abolition, "The preservation ofthe species? -- But why should the species be preserved?" (40) Skinner does not provide an answer, but welcomes Lewis's scientific "Controllers " who aim to change and dehumanize the human race in order more efficiently to fulfill their purposes.
Lewis satirized this kind of progress in his poem "Evolutionary Hymn, " which appeared in The Cambridge Review in 1957. Using Longfellow's popular hymn stanza form from "Psalm of Life, " Lewisexclaimed: What do we care about wrong or justice, joy or sorrow, so longa's our posterity survives? The old norms of good and evil are outmoded. It matters not if our posterity turns out to be hairy, squashy, or crustacean, tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless. "Goodness is what comes next. "His conclusion is that our progeny may be far from pleasant by present standards; but that matters not, if they Lewis has often been carelessly accused of being against science.
Infact, he gives us an admirable scientist in Bill Hingest in That Hideous Strength. Significantly, Hingest was murdered by order of the supposed scientists who directed the NICE. The enemy is not true science, which is fueled by a love of truth, but that applied science whose practitioners are motivated by a love of power. In Lewis's opinion the technological developments that are called steps in Man's Conquest of Nature in fact give certain me npower over others. Discarding Natural Law will always increase the dangers of having some people control others. Only Natural Law provides human standards which over-arch rulers and ruled alike.
Lewis went so far as to claim, "A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery. ."..
Free research essays on topics related to: white witch, lewis, natural law, human race, moral law
Research essay sample on C S Lewis And Natural Law
