Mere Christianity by CS Lewis Book 1
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: Notes
Preface
The contents of the book were first given on air and published into several parts:
The Case for Christianity (1943)
Christian Behavior (1943)
Beyond Personality (1945)
Book 1: Right and Wrong As A Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe
I. The Law of Human Nature
Both parties had in mind some king of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.
Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong; and there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are.
Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature
The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law—with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
Man cannot disobey laws, which he shared with other things. But the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses
This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.
They thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone
If this is not true, what was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real things which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced?
If they had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the color of their hair.
For the case of different civilizations and different ages having different moralities: the differences
Preface
The contents of the book were first given on air and published into several parts:
The Case for Christianity (1943)
Christian Behavior (1943)
Beyond Personality (1945)
Book 1: Right and Wrong As A Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe
I. The Law of Human Nature
Both parties had in mind some king of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.
Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong; and there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are.
Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature
The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law—with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
Man cannot disobey laws, which he shared with other things. But the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses
This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.
They thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone
If this is not true, what was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real things which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced?
If they had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the color of their hair.
For the case of different civilizations and different ages having different moralities: the differences