Man Know Thyself
The Other World
~ 22 ~
Imagine a stone balanced precariously on the
branch of a tree. You walk under it, it falls, hits you,
and you find yourself badly injured. Do you strike
the tree and bear a grudge against it? Of course not.
But suppose a man picks up a stone, throws it at
you with the intention of injuring you and actually
does so, won’t you become enraged and feel an
urge to retaliate in like manner? You would be
perfectly justified in feeling that this wrong should
be punished because the act was intentional. Here it
is a question not just of some random happening,
but of right and wrong action, good and bad
intentions, in a word, of ethics.
The examples chosen to clarify this point are of a
simple nature in that the outcome of the action is
immediately apparent and, moreover, in the second
case, it is possible to make an instant moral
judgement. But there are other much more complex
situations in life where wrong-doing goes
undetected, its effects may be hidden or delayed for
long periods, and the culprits may never be brought
to book either by the moral condemnation of society
or in a court of law. Sometimes evil-doing is, of
course, perceived as such, but the miscreant is so
