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THE REALITY OF THE LAW

I now go back to-what I said at the end of the first chapter, that there were two odd things about the human race First, that they were haunted by the idea of a sort of behaviour they ought to practise, what you ht call fair play, or decency, or morality, or the Law of Nature Second, that they did not in fact do so Now some of you may wonder why I called this odd Itin the world In particular, you ht I was rather hard on the hu the Law of Right and Wrong or of Nature, only means that people are not perfect And why on earth should I expect the to do was to fix the exact a as we expect others to behave But that is not my job at all I a to find out truth And fro iht to be, has certain consequences

If you take a thing like a stone or a tree, it is what it is and there seeht to have been otherwise Of course youshape&039; if you want to use it for a rockery, or that a tree is a bad tree because it does not give you as much shade as you expected But all you mean is that the stone or the tree does not happen to be convenient for so theiven the weather and the soil, the tree could not have been any different What we, fro the laws of its nature just as ood&039; one

Now have you noticed what follows? It follows that e usually call the laws of nature�Cthe eather works on a tree for example�Cmay not really be laws in the strict sense, but only in astones always obey the law of gravitation, is not thisthat the law only means &039;what stones always do&039;? You do not really think that when a stone is let go, it suddenly reround You only mean that, in fact, it does fall In other words, you cannot be sure that there is anything over and above the facts theht to happen, as distinct from what does happen The laws of nature, as applied to stones or trees, may only mean &039;what Nature, in fact, does&039; But if you turn to the Law of Human Nature, the Law of Decent Behaviour, it is a different matter That law certainly does not s, in fact, do&039;; for as I said before, many of them do not obey this law at all, and none of theravity tells you what stones do if you drop theht to do and do not In other words, when you are dealing with hu else comes in above and beyond the actual facts You have the facts (how ht to behave) In the rest of the universe there need not be anything but the facts Electrons and molecules behave in a certain way, and certain results follow, and that may be the whole story But men behave in a certain way and that is not the whole story, for all the tiht to behave differently

I do not think it is the whole story, as you will see later I one up to date, it may be

Now this is really so peculiar that one is teht try to ht not to act as he does, you onlyshape; na happens to be inconvenient to you But that is si the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while , are both equally inconvenient But I blary�Cexcept perhaps for a moment before I come to ry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed Yet the first has hurt me and the second has not Sometimes the behaviour which I call bad is not inconvenient to me at all, but the very opposite In war, each side h they use hiard him as human vermin So you cannot say that e call decent behaviour in others is simply the behaviour that happens to be useful to us And as for decent behaviour in ourselves, I suppose it is pretty obvious that it does notcontent with thirty shillings when youschool work honestly when it would be easy to cheat, leaving a girl alone when you would like to o so pro the truth even when it h decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment, still, it means what pays the human race as a whole; and that consequently there is no s, after all have some sense; they see that you cannot have any real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair, and it is because they see this that they try to behave decently Now, of course, it is perfectly true that safety and happiness can only co honest and fair and kind to each other It is one of the most important truths in the world But as an explanation of e feel as we do about Right and Wrong it just ht I to be unselfish?&039; and you reply &039;Because it is good for society,&039; we ood for society except when it happens to pay me personally?&039; and then you will have to say, &039;Because you ought to be unselfish&039;�Cwhich si what is true, but you are not getting any further If afootball, it would not be oals,&039; for trying to score goals is the gaa that football was football�Cwhich is true, but not worth saying In the sa decently, it is no good replying, &039;in order to benefit society,&039; for trying to benefit society, in other words being unselfish (for &039;society&039; after all only s decent behaviour consists in; all you are really saying is that decent behaviour is decent behaviour You would have said just as ht to be unselfish&039;

And that is where I do stop Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair Not thatunselfish, but that they ought to be The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave On the other hand, it is not a et rid of the idea, and s we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did And it is not simply a statement about hoe should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and ht and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it,that is really there, not made up by ourselves And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the sains to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is so it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the sains to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is so above and beyond the ordinary facts of men&039;s behaviour, and yet quite definitely real�Ca real lahich none of uson us