Page 86 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

people like Darwin, like Huxley, even like Marx, apart from one
or two slips, were models of morality in the full sense. But that is

all changed now. A young lady said to me the other day, 'If you
do something and it makes you feel good, then that thing is
right, at least for you,' and this is a very widely held view. It may

not be always held as explicitly, as openly and frankly as that, but
that is, in fact, what very many people do think.

This development is not necessarily a bad thing. In the long run
it might even be a good thing that morals should be thrown —

temporarily, we hope — into the melting-pot and that we should
have to re-think and re-feel, even re-imagine, our morality. It is

good that, ultimately, as I hope, a new ethic should emerge from
the ruins of the old.

Judaeo-Christian Ethics
In retrospect it seems that Western ethics started off rather on

the wrong foot. Our ethical tradition is a very composite thing,
not to say mixed. There are elements deriving from the classical,
i.e. Greek and Roman, tradition; there are Judaeo-Christian

elements and, especially in some of the Northern European
countries, there are elements of Germanic paganism. But

though our Western ethical tradition is made up of many
interwoven strands, it is the Judaeo-Christian element which
predominates. This is the 'official' ethic, to which, at least in the

past, everybody officially subscribed, whatever their private
practice or preference may have been.

In this Judaeo-Christian ethic we find that morality is
traditionally conceived very much in terms of Law.

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