GAMBLING AND ETHICS

 

By

 

William Temple –Archbishop of Canterbury (23rd April 1942) formerly Archbishop of York and earlier as Bishop of Manchester.

 

 PART 2

 

 

 

[Publishers Longmans, Green and Co. –1927]

 

The discussion which was set going by the proposal to institute a tax on Betting [Written in 1927] has revealed the fact that very few people have acquired the habit of thinking about moral issues.  Plenty of people feel, and feel strongly; very few seem to think.

 

As a result, obvious distinctions are ignored.  It is clear that in the public mind, phrases of moral description or classification are regarded as an index of feelings of approbation or disapprobation, rather than of any clear judgment.  This makes moral discussion almost futile.

 

I propose in this article to set out some of principles of ethics, as I understand them, and to illustrate them in reference to the question of Gambling.  But, of course, I realise that there are different “schools” of moral philosophy, and that my statement of principles would be challenged at many points by some students of the subject on perfectly reputable grounds.  But all “schools” seek to articulate the theory of the moral life by means of intelligible distinctions; none leaves it to be the sport of gusts of feeling.

 

1

 

First, then, I would insist that the moral judgment is, or at least the claims to be, a real judgment of fact; it is not a mere expression of disturbed or outraged feeling.  Even the holders of a distinct “moral sense” would claim that the perception of this sense is, or should be, proportionate to, and determined, the moral fact. 

 

This is important, because many people tend to judge the degree of evil in any act by the intensity of their own disgust at it.  So one noticed, during the war, that in some cases (though by no means in all) conscientious objection to military service really rested on aesthetic disgust.

 

This is in fact a most insecure criterion, for it depends largely on the vividness of imagination.  Suppose a man, transported by some passion which had its roots in indication, murders the object of his indignation with horrible mutilations; suppose another, moved by a coldly calculating self-interest, skilfully administers poison to someone who blocks his path.  Plainly the latter is the wickeder of the two; but his act is likely to be less disgusting.  We are disgusted chiefly by what horrifies the imagination, and this easily happens with what is physically horrible.  The artist in the crime is not disgusting; “the Devil is a gentleman.”

 

Moral judgement, then, is not concerned with the feelings of the critic, but with the quality of the act or agent.  And here we come upon a host of popular confusions.

 

11

 

IT is commonly said or implied that there are two kinds of wrong act – those which are wrong in themselves and those, which are wrong because of their consequences; and the question is often asked whether Betting is wrong in itself.  Further, it is apparently assumed that every act which is “wrong in itself” is worse than any act which is wrong because of its consequences.

 

So those who have said that Betting is wrong in itself are told that it is nonsense to put playing for low stakes on a level with murder or prostitution.  Of course it is.  But an act may be “wrong in itself,” so far as that phrase has any meaning, and yet be only a very little wrong; while an act may be wrong only for its consequences, and yet be a very great wrong.

 

An act, however, cannot, strictly speaking, be wrong in itself, apart from both motive and consequence.  So isolated, it is a mere physical fact devoid of moral value.  The moral value, positive or negative, lies always in personality-that of the agent and that of anyone affected by his act; but it must be tested by inquiry into three things: the character expressed in the act, the principle involved in the act, or the consequences resulting from the act.

 

 If I kill a man with a poker, it is not the mere swinging of the poker which is evil; it is the resultant death of the man, and (unless I act in self-defence) the intention to hurt or kill.

 

On the whole, people usually seem by acts “wrong in themselves” those which directly express an evil character; and as , in the last resort, it is only personal characters that are morally good or evil, this is the most justifiable use of a very obscure phrase.  Thus any form of illicit sensual indulgence exhibits a character that cares more for pleasures of sense than for the interests for whose sake that indulgence has become stamped as illicit; and this is bad character. 

 

But the indulgence itself mostly consists of acts which under certain conditions, are permissible and even necessary – such as eating and drinking.  The evil here is , therefore, the acceptance of a wrong scale of values.  And the act which is already evil because it springs from an evil state of character, is generally also evil because by force of example it encourages that evil state of character in others.

 

Such an act has moral evil, both in its source and in its result; and no doubt that is the most absolutely immoral kind of act.  But even here there are degrees; an act of this general type may be a gross or a trifling instance of the type. 

 

The second type of wrong act is that of acts which in given circumstances have bad effects, though in other circumstances they might have good effects.  Here the evil is in the consequences only; but it is certainly a duty to abstain from such actions.

 

The third main type of wrong is referred indiscriminately to each of the two categories in the popular classification.  Hence it is generally not observed at all.  It is a type of act whish is wrong, because it is based upon a wrong principle; that is to say, a principle which is contrary to the principles of well-being. 

 

The kind of lie which a man may tell from good motives is an illustration of this.  His intentions are good; that is to say, he wishes to promote general well-being as he understands it; he realises that to speak the truth will give pain; there seems to be no balancing advantage; so he says what is untrue.  

But his principle is false.  Veracity is essential to that full social intercourse which is part of human good.

 

Every lie  diminishes the trust which men put in one another; and this is its evil- as St Paul recognises when he gives as a reason for truth-speaking, that we are members one of another.  And on the whole it is a safe rule that the maintenance in their integrity of the principles essential to human welfare is more important than the particular advantage to be obtained from breaking them on any special occasion.

 

But it is not held in quite all cases. Thus the “medicinal lie,” where a doctor gives good news to a patient hovering between life and death, because the bad and true news would kill him, is generally recognised as justifiable.

 

Here the special character of the occasion is obvious, and the “lie” does not in fact at all diminish the general trust which men put in one another; all that the doctor has weakened is his power of using the “medicinal lie” quite as effectively another time.  Most of us , again, would regard as justifiable a lie told to a murderer by which his victim is enabled to escape.

 

But the very nature of the exceptions proves the general obligation of the rule; and it has to be noticed that many actions which rest on a wrong principle, but do not represent any scandalous kind of character, are actually worse by one of the two standards of judgment than are some of those which directly express a debased character.  Of course such acts represent imperfection of character, but not necessarily a character below the average.

 

 

III

 

For there are two standards of judgment- one referring to motive and the other to consequences.  If the act proceeds from a character in which love of sensual pleasure is stronger than sense of duty, it is bad with the badness of that sort of character.  If it proceeds from a good state of character misled by ignorance of the consequences likely to ensue, it is bad with the badness of those consequences.

 

With the first type we are not concerned here. No doubt there are in the world moral sceptics who profess to see no difference in value between a life of devoted service and a life of sheer self-indulgence; we are not now arguing with these; they can usually be trapped into a repudiation of their position by anyone who knows the gambit. 

 

We are concerned with people who do pronounce moral judgment and at least by profession, accept the Christian scale of values.  We need not, therefore, argue that acts in which personal health or social fellowship are sacrificed to sensuous pleasure are wrong.

 

But acts are wrong when they have the tendency to destroy social well-being, even though the agent is quite ignorant of this tendency.  A person who, with the best intentions, acts so as to do harm is commonly described as “well-meaning”- a term which has in it far more blame than praise.

 

Where the ignorance , which led the well-meaning

Person wrong, is avoidable, such an act is a direct expression of a bad character- a character so enamoured of its own amiable feelings that it takes no trouble to acquire accurate information; this is one form of the vice of sentimentalism.  Where the ignorance was unavoidable, the agent is free from all blame.  But the innocence of the agent does not prove the innocence of the act.

 

It is necessary to insist on this with something like violence.  The subjectivism everywhere rampant has led many people to affirm that if a man sees no harm in what he is doing, there is no harm in it; or, at any rate, that if he thinks it right, it is right.

 

That is sheer confusion.  A man is indeed bound to follow his conscience, but he is also bound to take care that his conscience is as enlightened as possible

  What a man’s conscience condemns at any time depends very largely on his previous habit of life.  Acts are right or wrong quite independently of anyone so judging them; in that sense, they are right or wrong in themselves.

 

Their moral value does in fact reside in the character that prompts them and the social consequences involved in them. Part of a man’s duty is to see that his own sense of duty corresponds to these two standards.  A man must obey his conscience; and if, in doing so, he acts wrongly, his guilt depends on the trouble he had taken fully to inform his judgment; if he has done all he could, he is blameless- but the act is still wrong.

 

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