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 Book-Digest 

Ethical Religion

By M.K.Gandhi

Introduction:

Ethics tells us what the world ought to be. It enables man to know how he should act.  It is necessary to know about the evil effects of injustice, wickedness vanity and the like and the disaster they spell when the three are found together. Mere knowledge is not enough. It should be followed by appropriate action.

  If a man does a good deed, he does not do it to win applause. He does it because he must. For him doing good is a higher kind of food. If someone should give him an opportunity to do a good deed, he would feel grateful just as a starving man would be grateful to the giver of food and bless him.

Ideal Morality.

 Anyone who observes the laws of morality for their own sake and not for any selfish end can be regarded as religious. When we know a particular path to be right one, we should set out on it without fear. We can progress only if we observe the laws of morality in this way. True morality, true civilization and true progress are always found together. If we take out the essence of all moral laws, we shall find that the attempt to do good to all mankind is the highest morality. If we open the treasure house of morality, we shall find in it all the other principles.

What is a moral act?

 A moral act must be our own act. It must spring from our own will. If we act mechanically, there is no moral content in our act. To illustrate, it may be moral of a king to pardon a culprit. But the messenger carrying the order plays only a mechanical part in the king’s moral act.

It is not enough if the act done is good. It must be done with the intention to do good. Emperor Alexander, wherever he went in the course of his conquest, he took Greek language and Greek culture, art and manners.  But the intention of Alexander behind all this was only conquest and renown. His was not a moral act.

It is not enough if a moral act to have been done with a good intention, but it should have been done without compulsion. There is no morality in my act, if I rise early out of the fear that if I am late for my office, I may lose my situation. Likewise it is only selfish, and not moral, of an employer to sympathize with his employees or to pay them higher wages lest they leave him.

For an action should be considered moral, there should be no self interest behind it. That is not to say that actions prompted by self interest are worthless. But they are not moral acts.

 (To be continued)