the Devil You Say! R. M. Thornton

660 THE FREEMAN November to all the other means of moral education that I have identified. Instruction, environment, example, discipline, working separately or together, can start us on the path of self-mastery, but only habit can make it certain that we reach our destination; or, to shift the image, the four other agencies may entice or coerce us into the chamber where spiritual regenera tion takes place, but only habit can complete the process and make permanent its results. It would seem, then, that moral education, intended to produce the man of character, should place ul timate and supreme emphasis on the formation of right habits. By way of concluding this brief treatment of a subject of im mense importance, I should like to recur to and further emphasize one idea. This is the idea that moral excellence is a quality which, generally speaking, cannot be readily or quickly arrived at; on the contrary, it is normally the result of long and assiduous train ing. This being the case, nothing could be less wise than to assume - as now seems widely assumed that youth can get all the ethical culture it needs, by a species of osmosis, from the surrounding at mosphere. Such a notion, the sur rounding atmosphere being what it is (illustrations I omit as stark ly superfluous), would surely be chimerical in the extreme. It seems clear that moral education, in any area, had best be preceded by vivid realization of the true magnitude of the task. ~ The DevilYou Say!

ROBERT M. THORNTON THE FOUNDING FATHERS held to an unsentimental view of the na ture of man. They regarded him as a flawed creature, peculiarly liable to be corrupted by the exMr. Thornton is a businessman in Covington, Kentucky. ercise of power; and further - as John Jay observed - they believed that any form of government that fails to consider men as they really are will soon prove abortive. The elaborate system of checks and balances written into the 1968 THE DEVIL YOU SAY! 661 United States Constitution reflects this opinion of human nature, be ing an effort to contain power and disperse its exercise. They sketched the structure of a tolerable society, knowing full well that imperfect men cannot create a perfect one. Even Jefferson, more optimistic than most, pooh-poohed the idea of the natural goodness of man when it comes to questions of power. "Bind him down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution," he cried.

But what do we say today about the nature of man? The prevailing view, it is safe to say, is that man is not a flawed creature at all. It may take lots of time and money and planning, we are told, but the shortcomings of men can be cor rected. Man is perfectible, but a faulty social environment has kept him wretched. We now have the means of perfecting the environ ment and breeding the kind of men to suit. The knowledge is at hand, and the next step is to grant the state the necessary powers to put it to practical use. N ow this is an important change in our understanding of human nature. What we are deny ing, although perhaps not in so many words, is the reality of evil, the Christian symbol of which is the Devil. Of course, this symbol, like most, has been misused and to say you believe in the Devil means to many persons that you think a red creature with horns and a tail is running around with a pitch for/k chasing people. But properly understood, the Devil stands for the very real existence of evil in the world, and we can expect him to be around as long as the world is. So, then, those who believe man may achieve perfection are saying, in theological language, there is no Devil.

Dangerous Consequences What are the consequences of this idea, consequences that should concern not only philosophers and theologians but all men? Perhaps the most dangerous, especially to libertarians, is the willingness to grant more and more power to the state to plan for and conse quently control the lives of indi vidual citizens. We falsely believe that there are some men so good we can trust them with unlimited powers and so wise we can ex pect to live better lives after we submit to their direction. Deny the reality of evil and we come to believe that the imperfections of man and his societies can be cor rected once "social engineers" backed by the state succeed in de termining our environment, and even our heredity. Government ac tion will eliminate poverty, broken homes, prejudice, poor schools, eco nomic inequality, and similar im662 THE FREEMAN November pediments, and usher in utopia.

The assumption is that man's problems are somehow external to him. The older view, on the other hand, regarded man himself as the problem, and this insight tied in with free will. The tiger cannot choose to be untigerish, Ortega remarked somewhere, but a man can choose to be unhuman. It is this capacity for choice that is the distinctive mark of humanity, and which enables a man to rise above his environment where animals simply adapt to theirs. When environmentalism takes over it lessens the sense of re sponsibility. What do many of us say when, for instance, a senator is shot down? Our ancestors would have regarded the murderer as a tool of the Devil or as a terrible sinner, but we think of him as a sick person, that is, a man not responsible for his crime. Society is somehow to blame. Alter so ciety, then, and such persons will be cured by the political medicine man. Today's view of man's nature represents a 180-degree change from that of the Founding Fath ers. But even today, some of us believe that a man need not be sick, physically or mentally, to commit a crime whether it be murder or something less serious.

A murderer may very well be rational, intelligent, polite, well poised - in many ways a likable fellow - but yet so evil that he does wrong. Or, in theological language, he succumbs to the Devil's temptations. Not every hor rible deed is done by a "nut." Utopians have for a long time been ridiculed, and properly so, but it is more important to refute the premise underlying all utopian schemes: the erroneous idea that man is perfectible, that evil is not inherent in the nature of man. Although we may not care to use old symbols, we must once again reaffirm our belief that evil in the world is a very real thing, that, if I may put it so, the Devil is still with us and is likely to stay. ~ Passions Forge Fetters SOCIETY cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

EDMUND BURKE, 1791 CLARENCE B. CARSON i£uglau~ 9. THE WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD MOST COMMONLY, leadership with in a civilization has gone to that country most successful in prac ticing the arts of war and bring ing others under its sway by mili tary conquest. The armies of Alex ander the Great preceded the Hellenizing of the Mediterranean; the Legions of Caesar spread the civilization of Rome; French pre ponderance in the High Middle Ages rested in part upon the work of such as William the Conqueror; and the armies of Louis XIV con solidated French leadership in the seventeenth century of our era. Indeed, conquered peoples appear Dr. Carson, Professor of History at Grove City College, Pennsylvania, will be remembered for his earlier FREEMAN series, The Fateful Turn, The American Tradition, and The Flight from Reality. quite often to accept the military superiority of the conqueror as an indication of the general su periority of his way. At any rate and for whatever reasons, they learn, imitate, and adopt his ways: his language, his arts, his eco nomic system, and so on. Thus, military conquest frequently has resulted in leadership within a civilization.