Customs, Convenience, and Conduct – Sunday, July 06, 1947
The thought has been often expressed that there is no such thing as a basic morality, that the laws to which men are accountable for their moral conduct change as do any other laws, from time to time and from place to place, according to custom and convenience. However much this may seem to be so, let us look where it would lead: To say this would be to say that whatever is condoned by any people or any generation is right for that people and for that generation—that anything any society may decide to do is right for them to do.
And to say this is to say that there are no inalienable rights where men are concerned, and that any law a people pass is all right for them to pass, and that any custom a people accept is all right for them to accept. But can we imagine any society surviving where dishonesty, theft, violence, murder, and other immoralities are declared to be ‘lawful? Yet this in substance is what we have said when we say that each generation may make its own rules in all matters, and that the laws of morality are merely a matter of custom. And thus, we see where a false plausibility could take us if we were to go with it as far as it goes.
To quote a wise and ancient philosopher on the subject: “The opinion that each man holds is not a sufficient criterion for determining the truth. We must be concerned with the question: Are our opinions, right? … Does the madman do anything else but that which seems to him to be good? Is this criterion, then, sufficient …? It is not … Go, therefore to something higher than your own opinion . . .”1 And, if there is a law higher than the opinion of one man, there is also a law higher than the opinions of all men. Assuredly men are accountable to laws higher than those which they themselves set up to serve their own convenience.
1Epictetus, from W. A. Oldfather translation.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday July 6, 1947. 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, EDST. Copyright 1947.
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July 06, 1947
Broadcast Number 0,933