Lay Morals | Page 5

years began
to find these precepts insufficient; and made an addition of no less than
six hundred and fifty others! They hoped to make a pocket-book of
reference on morals, which should stand to life in some such relation,
say, as Hoyle stands in to the scientific game of whist. The comparison
is just, and condemns the design; for those who play by rule will never
be more than tolerable players; and you and I would like to play our
game in life to the noblest and the most divine advantage. Yet if the
Jews took a petty and huckstering view of conduct, what view do we
take ourselves, who callously leave youth to go forth into the enchanted
forest, full of spells and dire chimeras, with no guidance more complete
than is afforded by these five precepts?
HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER. Yes, but does that
mean to obey? and if so, how long and how far? THOU SHALL NOT
KILL. Yet the very intention and purport of the prohibition may be best
fulfilled by killing. THOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. But
some of the ugliest adulteries are committed in the bed of marriage and
under the sanction of religion and law. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR
FALSE WITNESS. How? by speech or by silence also? or even by a
smile? THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. Ah, that indeed! But what is TO
STEAL?
To steal? It is another word to be construed; and who is to be our guide?
The police will give us one construction, leaving the word only that
least minimum of meaning without which society would fall in pieces;
but surely we must take some higher sense than this; surely we hope
more than a bare subsistence for mankind; surely we wish mankind to
prosper and go on from strength to strength, and ourselves to live

rightly in the eye of some more exacting potentate than a policeman.
The approval or the disapproval of the police must be eternally
indifferent to a man who is both valorous and good. There is extreme
discomfort, but no shame, in the condemnation of the law. The law
represents that modicum of morality which can be squeezed out of the
ruck of mankind; but what is that to me, who aim higher and seek to be
my own more stringent judge? I observe with pleasure that no brave
man has ever given a rush for such considerations. The Japanese have a
nobler and more sentimental feeling for this social bond into which we
all are born when we come into the world, and whose comforts and
protection we all indifferently share throughout our lives:- but even to
them, no more than to our Western saints and heroes, does the law of
the state supersede the higher law of duty. Without hesitation and
without remorse, they transgress the stiffest enactments rather than
abstain from doing right. But the accidental superior duty being thus
fulfilled, they at once return in allegiance to the common duty of all
citizens; and hasten to denounce themselves; and value at an equal rate
their just crime and their equally just submission to its punishment.
The evading of the police will not long satisfy an active conscience or a
thoughtful head. But to show you how one or the other may trouble a
man, and what a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this
invaluable eighth commandment, let me tell you a few pages out of a
young man's life.
He was a friend of mine; a young man like others; generous, flighty, as
variable as youth itself, but always with some high motions and on the
search for higher thoughts of life. I should tell you at once that he
thoroughly agrees with the eighth commandment. But he got hold of
some unsettling works, the New Testament among others, and this
loosened his views of life and led him into many perplexities. As he
was the son of a man in a certain position, and well off, my friend had
enjoyed from the first the advantages of education, nay, he had been
kept alive through a sickly childhood by constant watchfulness,
comforts, and change of air; for all of which he was indebted to his
father's wealth.
At college he met other lads more diligent than himself, who followed
the plough in summer-time to pay their college fees in winter; and this
inequality struck him with some force. He was at that age of a

conversible temper, and insatiably curious in the aspects of life; and he
spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of man-
and woman-kind. In this way he came upon many depressed ambitions,
and many intelligences stunted for want of opportunity; and this also
struck him. He began to