GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

226 ETHICS
always disagreeable to him. A good man is one who acts as
he ought to do; he does his duty. Must he always dislike it?
And ifhe does always dislike it, can he be really good ? These
questions are exceedingly awkward for supporters of Kant's
theory. Goodness cannot always be easy to us, and he who
never experiences the temptation to do what he thinks he
ought not to do, or, to put the point the other way round,
never thinks that he ought not to do what he wants to do, is,
I imagine, either more or less than a man; more, because
to be above temptation is to participate in the Divine,
less, inasmuch as, his moral sense being inadequately
developed, he falls short of the full human stature.
Animals, presumably, rarely, if ever, experience the
conflict between duty and desire, not because they are
without desire, but because they are without the sense
of duty.
But to admit that our duty must sometimes run counter
to our inclinations, is not to say that it must always do so;
and, in criticism of Kant's view, we are entitled to invoke
a mass of human testimony to the effect that the good
man is one who naturally and spontaneously does what
he ought to do. Unselfishness, for example, is not always
unpleasant to the "reHfih person; it is often displayed
and* i*T>hf*gitfltJTigly by those to whom unselfish
actions are natural and habitual. They act unselfishly,
in fact, because they are unselfish persons, and,
since unselfish action is in accordance with their natures,
we cannot suppose it to be naturally disagreeable to them.
The Paradox of Ethics.
(a) THAT VIRTUE MUST BE NATURAL* Having reached
this point in our reflections, we find ourselves in sight
of one of the paradoxes of human conduct. The perfectly
good man might, one -would suppose, be defined as one
who habitually and unhesitatingly does what is right.
For the perfectly good man is not, one would have said,
a man who, by taking continual thought for his virtue,
by being constantly on his guard against temptation,