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MORALITY AND FEAR OF PUNISHMENT
to draw attention to the fact, implicit in what has been said
above, that man’s need of forgiveness is as real as his tragedy.
Again the point can be put very simply in terms of the
relation of love or communion between person and person.
When we are guilty of disloyalty to a friend, with or without
his knowledge, we know that we have betrayed ourselves. We
are dismayed less by what we have done than by what our deed
discloses of the hitherto unrealised potentialities for evil in our
own nature: potentialities that are not eradicated or expunged
from consciousness by any act of restitution we may make or
any gesture or word of forgiveness from our friend.
This new self-knowledge, revealed in the thought or act of
betrayal, at once convicts and condemns us. Its direct result is
to produce an emotional attitude of self-concern and
selfpreoccupation which is inimical to the renewal of the
relationship that we have broken; and to the establishment of any
other relationship of the same kind. The most poignant
element of the consciousness of personal guilt lies in this. It
compels us to acknowledge the reality of something within
us that is destructive of personal relationships as such, and
may at any time cause us to repeat the betrayal that has
already brought anguish to us and others. Consequently we
become afraid, not only of our friend, but of friendship itself.
Our guilt paralyses our will to action and makes it difficult—
sometimes impossible—for us to attempt again to do what we
have already done with such disastrous effects. Our state is
precisely that of the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda.
The state of helplessness in self-isolation thus produced is
intensified and soon develops into hopelessness when it is
produced, not by a deliberate, individual act of disloyalty, but
by the social conditions in which we live: when the evil which
destroys communion is, so to speak, woven into the very
fabric of our corporate way of life. Then we are made aware by
the march of events, moving inexorably towards destructive
ends, of our personal impotence to redeem a tragic situation in
which we are participating: a situation that is what it is
because the betrayal of man by man has assumed cosmic
significance. We know then that when we break the bond of love that
binds us to another human individual we are committing an
offence not merely against him and ourselves but against the
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