To behave as the code directs is to serve whatever purpose
the code pursues. It may be God's will, or the king's, individual
salvation in a good, solid, three dimensional paradise, success on
earth, or the service of mankind. In any event the makers of the code
fix upon certain typical situations, and then by some form of
reasoning or intuition, deduce the kind of behavior which would
produce the aim they acknowledge. The rules apply where they apply.
But in daily living how does a man know whether his predicament is the
one the law-giver had in mind? He is told not to kill. But if his
children are attacked, may he kill to stop a killing? The Ten
Commandments are silent on the point. Therefore, around every code
there is a cloud of interpreters who deduce more specific cases.
Suppose, then, that the doctors of the law decide that he may kill in
self-defense. For the next man the doubt is almost as great; how does
he know that he is defining self-defense correctly, or that he has not
misjudged the facts, imagined the attack, and is really the aggressor?
Perhaps he has provoked the attack. But what is a provocation? Exactly
these confusions infected the minds of most Germans in August, 1914.
Far more serious in the modern world than any difference of moral code
is the difference in the assumptions about facts to which the code is
applied. Religious, moral and political formulae are nothing like so
far apart as the facts assumed by their votaries.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134