The
Nature of the Law of Nature
Anthony
Kellems, April 6, 2000
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon (Phillips 225).
Humans are complex beings. They adapt, learn, have intelligence and free
will, can reason, feel emotions, and have a conscience. Although such qualities
and attributes raise humans above the rest of other life forms, it is
questionable as to where the idea of a conscience and emotions come from. What
exactly is it that stimulates our responses to certain situations and problems?
The answer lies in human nature. What we as humans feel is right or wrong is
somehow dictated by something beyond merely the individual. The underlying
question, therefore, becomes what that outside influence is: nature, our
inherent human qualities themselves, or some man-made composite of other people
and experiences? In more specific terms, the question is whether or not our
morality and our adherence to a moral code is something fixed and constant
throughout humanity itself. Francis Bacon stated that nature must first be
obeyed before it can be put to use, and the same concept applies to humans.
Before any judgment can be made about people, groups, ideas, or beliefs, one
must first have a standard to compare this behavior to. If there is no real Law
of Nature, then no standard is set, and one thing cannot be compared to another
because the standard is only set by opinion,
not by fact. In reality, the Law of Nature is a reality which is independent of
man-made ideas, although the way in which humans think is definitely influenced
by the environment.
Let us first address the issue of the impact of the environment on a
person’s moral development. In Bonfire of the Vanities, author Tom Wolfe
quotes physiologist José Delgado, saying that “each person is a transitory
composite of materials borrowed from the environment” (Wolfe 512). This concept
is significant because it demonstrates that people take from the environment
certain aspects which eventually come to mold their characters. The idea of a
composite also shows that we are not merely independent individuals, but, as
O’Malley describes, we are social beings (O’Malley 104). However, this does not
mean that our inherent human nature is
dictated by the environment; remember, Delgado says that the composite is
transitory. If each person is not constant, then that person’s instincts do not
change, merely his own rationale. C.S. Lewis described the scenario of a man
who sees a drowning person and has two instincts: to help him or to go on, and
usually the instinct which is more self-protective is stronger (Lewis Ch. 2).
Whether the man chooses to act upon the instinct of helping the man is a
different issue than whether he has
the instinct in the first place. That urge cannot be non-existent in a person,
but it can be conditioned to be lessened significantly throughout that person’s
life. Yet, the fact that it was there to begin with indicates that man did not
manufacture that urge to offer aid. The instinct itself is not the law,
however, because sometimes our urges can lead us to do the wrong thing.
Of course, one’s education and interaction with others plays a significant
role in this conditioning process. Parents, teachers, friends, the government,
and everybody else that a person interacts with influences what that person
thinks and believes. The “rightness,” or “correctness,” or “goodness” of this
molded belief, however, is not what is created. Take, for instance, two grade
schoolers out on the playground. If one of them throws sand at the other, then
the victim will often make some appeal to the idea that “That’s not fair!” or
“You’re not playing nice!” The child somehow has the idea that what the other
boy did was “wrong” and therefore measures that behavior according to some
standard. Of course, he may have had the idea of fair play “taught” or
reinforced throughout his growing-up, but the concept is there nonetheless.
The perpetrator, however, must also be addressed. Why, if there is no
man-made law, would he decide to go against this “natural” law? The answer lies
in the other fact that one attribute that sets humans apart from other life
forms, as aforementioned, is free will and the ability to reason. Reasoning
allows humans to look at a situation and make a decision about it according to
the given factors. Free will extends this further, too, by providing humans
with the capacity to choose any of the possible options, regardless of the
implications or outcomes. The boy who threw the sand is not living in
discordance with the law, but rather has freely chosen to disobey it. This is further substantiated by what
follows. When the boy is questioned, he will begin making excuses, attempting
to justify what he has done. This
process of justification when a wrong has been committed indicates guilt and
the urge to free oneself from this guilt. The guilty feeling signals,
therefore, the presence of some outside influence beyond the environment.
One may be asking why it must be beyond the environment and not dictated by
it, the guilt being merely a product of the conditioning and training. Simply,
if whatever the environment “told” a person was true, then the endless variety
of people and beliefs which we see would not be possible. I must digress to a
recent classroom discussion in which on of my friends, Rakesh Ahuja,
contributed a very important facet of my discussion. He expressed disagreement
with the class’s ideas on this topic, and proposed a hypothetical situation in
which everybody did go along with what the environment, primarily the
government, mandated. This has led me to formulate the Actuality Corollary:
When discussing matters dealing with the inherent qualities
of the human person, one cannot make hypothetical assump-
tions which introduce concepts which are not present in the
reality of that being discussed.
This corollary has great implications to the present topic because it
essentially states that if a hypothetical scenario is created in which the
actuality of the matter at hand is completely changed to fit a person’s idea,
then the whole discussion is debunked. Of course something would have to be
true if it is set it up that way in the scenario! However, if one creates a
scenario with the same attributes that the matter at hand displays, then it is
a valid example. With that in mind, we can refocus out attention to whether the
Law of Nature is real or not.
Applying the Actuality Corollary to people in our world shows that, indeed,
the Law of Nature must have its essence autonomous from man-made inventions.
For one thing, the government does not rule what people think. There is much
disparity in opinions regarding abortion and capital punishment from all
members of society. The lack of agreement
demonstrates the idea of free will as well as the fact that what the government
[environment] says does not mandate our behavior. If the Law of Nature had been
man-made, then people would, as Rakesh pointed out, abide by the laws and have
no authority to contest or change them. However, people are consistently
appealing to some standard and they attempt to change laws. Furthermore, the
environment does not make something right or wrong: “The law does not make an
action evil; it only makes it illegal” (O’Malley 36). Just because the law says
one can have an abortion does not mean that it is right. An interesting side
note to this is a contradiction within our own legal system: when a woman has
an abortion, it is legal; when a person kills a pregnant woman and the baby is
also killed, it is a double homicide. That just doesn’t add up, but it’s only
something to think about because it shows that the same essential action is
legal in one instance but illegal in another.
Now that it has been determined that the Law of Nature is not dependent on
man, it does not suffice to say that morality is possessed merely by an
individual. It is actually something which subsumes the whole group of
humanity. If morality were something inherent to only a person, then it would also
be true that morality is characteristic of that person and differs with
everyone. This would bring in the concept of multiple true moralities, yet this
is not the case. For example, a sadist or masochist takes pleasure in having
pain inflicted upon them or in inflicting pain on somebody else. This idea of
hurting somebody else or oneself is adopted by these people, yet that does not
mean it is right. Morality belongs not just to the person, but to all of
humanity itself. This is why one can distinguish Nazi “morality” as less than
Churchill’s “morality” (Lewis Ch. 2). There cannot be multiple moralities
because if there were then there would be no reason to question the events in
the world. Killings and beatings and Hitler’s policy could not be criticized
(and the Allies could not, therefore, be in the right in attacking the Nazi’s)
because no policy could be compared to a true morality. Therefore, the
disagreements experienced concerning the environment are not just applying to
one person, but there is some overall objective idea that pertains to
everybody.
The Law of Nature has its basis in the inherent nature of humanity itself,
and it is not simply controlled by our outside experiences. Granted, what we
experience is a substantial part of our moral development, yet it is not the
only thing. There is some inner ideal which we naturally feel which is above
instinct and the environment. Before I close my argument, I must comment on the
style of this paper. First of all, I do not claim to know everything pertaining
to this topic, yet I know that what I have stated here is true. Further
elucidation may be required, but the possible vagueness or miswording of my
arguments does not nullify their correctness. Also, the issue of indifference
must be addressed. One cannot be indifferent to this idea of morality because
the same person who claims that he is indifferent will not stand by idly when
something happens to him. He will undoubtedly appeal to a standard of moral
behavior, the Law of Nature, and thus prove that he himself possesses the very
attribute which he tries to refute. I close, therefore, with words of wisdom
from Seneca:
Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it
never fails
of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his
own hangman. (Phillips 150).
Works Cited
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity.
O’Malley, William J. Meeting the Living God.
Phillips, Bob. Phillip’s Book of Great Thoughts and Funny Sayings.
Wolfe, Tom. Bonfire of the Vanities.