A. Like the Law of Nature are the laws of gravitation, heredity, or chemistry.
1. However, people can choose to obey or disobey the Law of Human Nature. (a feature that is peculiar to this law in particular)
2. It is called the LAw of Nature bcause people thought that everyone knew it by nature, and didn't need to be taught it.
3. Different civilizations and different ages do not have different moralities.
4. None of us are really keeping the Law of Nature.
B. Two Main Ideas.
1. "Human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it."
2. "They do not in fact behave that way."
II. "Some Objections."
A. Three Types of Desire that prompt us to act the way we do.
1. Herd Instinct.
2. Instinct of Self-Preservation.
3. Moral Law.
a. This is the instinct, which helps us distinguish between the other two, and decide which one to choose.
B. Two Arguments for the LAw of Human Nature.
1. "There are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great."
2. "When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another?"
C. It is people's different ideas about Decent Behavior that make them think that there is no Natural Law of Behavior.
III. "The Reality of the Law."
A. "The Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought and ought do not".
1. Men know this, but often behave in a different way.
2. You have to avoid going in circles when making this argument.
IV. "What Lies Behind the Laws."
A. The Materialist View.
1. "People who take this view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and have always existed, and matter behaving the way it does just happened."
2. Nobody knows why.
B. The Religious View.
1. "What is behind the universe is more like a mind than anything else we know."
2. "It is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another."
C. Man itself is proof to support the religious view.
1. We have more insight here than in any other area because we are Man, and we know that we find ourselves under some moral law.
2. As men, we have an obligation to follow a moral law, that we do not know where it came from, and we cannot choose to ignore it.
3. It is in this way that our creator cannot show himself to us, it could not be one of the facts of our own universe.
4. The only way we can find this creator is inside ourselves.
C.S. Lewis Reflection
How can anyone claim that they can make generalizations about the human race as a whole? How can great thinkers like Aristotle propose a plan for happiness that applies to all people, even people living hundreds of years after him? The answer that C. S. Lewis would propose is that morality is objective, not subjective. According to him, different cultures and different ages do not have different moralities. The answer to these questions is C. S. Lewis' Law of Human Nature, which tells us humans what they should and should not do. It was believed that this natural instinct that we possess for what is right and what is wrong, is planted inside of everyone. They knew it by nature and didn't need to be taught it. The problem wasn't whether or not people had different moralities, and our problem is often not whether we have the Right or Wrong Human Nature. Our problems lie in what we do about them. People like Aristotle could then observe what men were doing wrong in their quest for purification of themselves, and with that their mishaps. It was thanks to this that he could deduct what would be beneficial to all people of all time. That is a good think about morality. No matter how much technology advances, or how quickly, our morals stll remain the same. Different situations could come up in which they may be challenged, but the basis for morality doesn't change. We still face the same moral decisions that people of Aristotle's time did, they are just presented to us in a different way. Noticing this, Aristotle was able to formulate his right plan for happinedd, and claim that it applied to all human beings.