Chapter 2 of "Mere Christianity" seeks to answer objections to the idea of the Moral Law as it was established in Chapter 1. A potential objection: "Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?"
Lewis acknowledges that indeed we are sometimes prompted by instinct, "a strong want or desire to act in a certain way." However, "feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not." If I see someone in danger, I will probably be torn between two instincts: to help (due to the herd instinct) or to play it safe, staying away (due to the instinct for self-preservation). Lewis makes what I believe to be a profound observation about this process: "But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts... cannot itself be either of them." Lewis make the analogy that our instincts are like piano keys, and the Moral Law is like the sheet music that tells us which keys to play. Morality is in an entirely different category than instinct.
We are often most aware of the Moral Law when we feel two conflicting impulses. The strongest impulse is about to win, but there is something in us that tells us the weaker impulse is right. There is something in me that tells me I must do what I can to strengthen that weaker instinct, even when it is harder to follow because it may be right. This internal urge toward one instinct or the other can itself be neither of these instincts; it is, instead, a completely different thing.
If there were no outside standard to choose between instincts, the stronger instinct should always win; we observe that it does not. If that voice telling us to sometimes choose the weaker instinct is itself merely an instinct, is it not also subject to that asserted but false brute fact - that the strongest impulse wins and is therefore what we would term Right? No, this voice telling us how to choose is a different thing, a thing that does not generally care for our comfort and convenience. As Flannery O'Connor has stated, "Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." It could also be said, "Right and Wrong does not change according to our ability ot stomach it."
Another way to see the uniqueness of this Moral Law as separate from our instincts is this: "Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses." We, of course, would think of this Moral Law as Good and as Right. But we cannot take an instinct and set it up that way. "There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage." The sexual instinct must be suppressed at times, but it is also good to encourage it sometimes (such as in marriage). The fighting instinct generally must be suppressed, but in times of war, it is good for a man to encourage it in order to secure the courage to do his duty. Mother love would seem to be always a good thing to encourage, but it must be checked, or else it may lead to a smothered child or unfairness toward the children of others. As in the piano example, there are right and wrong times to play the different notes if the tune is to come out as intended.
The following paragraph I quote almost in full because it is a brilliant denunciation of idolatry and a call to a Moral balance: "The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man."
We were taught the Moral Law by parents and teachers and others. Is it therefore a mere human invention? It would be a fallacy to say that it is a human invention simply because we have been taught it. We are taught the multiplication tables, but they are a thing we discovered, not a thing we made up. We make up our traffic laws. It is not a universal truth that cars must drive on the right side of the road. Is this Moral Law like multiplication or like traffic laws?
Lewis is brilliant for observing the way people think and using, not even necessarily the content of that thought, but the very thought process itself to prove his point. He believes the Moral Law belongs to the category of Truth, like the multiplication table, and he shows it in this way: most people naturally believe in progress, that the moralities of some civilizations are better than others. For instance, what did Martin Luther King Jr. labor for? A better America for all citizens. What about Nazi Germany? Is Germany better today than it was then? There really is progress, and we still need it; few deny this.
Lewis writes, "If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality." The very act of comparing moralities, though, means that you are comparing them against something, measuring them against a different standard, a true standard. If I say America today is better than America before the Civil War, I am saying that today's America comes closer to that ultimate standard. In order for the act of comparing or measuring progress to have any meaning, we must ackowledge that we really do feel the presence of a Standard that we are measuring against. Everyone does it; not everyone is honest about it.
A final important thought: Some exaggerate the differences between cultures to try to tear down the idea of a Moral Law - because after all, it's really uncomfortable isn't it? But many of the differences come down to disagreement, not over moral choices, but over belief about whether certain facts are true. For instance, today's enlightened man thinks that burning witches is barbaric. But that, of course, is because he doesn't believe in witches. If he did - think about what a witch really is - then he might act differently. But he is not morally superior for not executing witches because, due his difference of belief over their existence, he has never really been faced with this moral dilemma. He is, perhaps, more intelligent, not morally superior. "You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house."
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