What is Morality? What Gurdjeff says?

  When he was in Kars, still only a candidate for the priesthood, Bogachevsky had very original views on morality. He then said and

taught me that on earth there are two moralities: one objective,

established by life in the course of thousands of years, and the other

subjective, pertaining to individuals as well as to whole nations,

kingdoms, families, groups of people and so forth.

'Objective morality,' he said, 'is established by life and by the

commandments given us by the Lord God Himself through His

prophets, and it gradually becomes the basis for the formation in man of

what is called conscience. And it is by this conscience that objective

morality, in its turn, is maintained. Objective morality never changes, it

can only broaden in the course of time. As for subjective morality, it is

invented by man and is therefore a relative conception, differing for

different people and different places and depending upon the particular

understanding of good and evil prevailing in the given period.

'For example, here in Transcaucasia,' said Bogachevsky, 'if a woman

does not cover her face and if she speaks with a guest, everyone will

regard her as immoral, spoiled and badly brought

up. But in Russia, on the contrary, if a woman does cover her face and if

she does not welcome a guest and entertain him with conversation,

everyone will consider her badly brought up, rude, disagreeable and so

forth.

'Another example: if a man here in Kars does not go once a week, or

at least once in two weeks, to the Turkish bath, everyone round him will

dislike him and be disgusted by him, and even find that he has a bad

odour, which he may not have at all. But in St. Petersburg it is just the

opposite: if a man even mentions going to the baths, he is considered

uneducated, unintelligent, boorish and so on; and if by chance he should

actually go, he will hide the fact from others so that such a low taste

should not be attributed to him.

'As a very good illustration of the relative understanding of so-called

morality or honour,' continued Bogachevsky, 'let us take the two

incidents which occurred here in Kars last week among the officers and

which made a great stir.

'The first was the trial of Lieutenant K and the second the suicide of

Lieutenant Makarov.

'Lieutenant K was tried by the military court for having struck a

shoemaker, Ivanov, in the face so brutally that he lost an eye. The court

acquitted him, after having found out on investigation that the

shoemaker had caused Lieutenant K much annoyance and had spread

insulting rumours about him.

'Having become very interested in this case, I decided, disregarding

the evidence of the court, to question the family and acquaintances of

the unfortunate shoemaker, so as to ascertain for myself the real reasons

for the conduct of Lieutenant K.

'This lieutenant, as I learned, had ordered first one pair and then two

more pairs of boots from the shoemaker Ivanov and had promised to

send him the money on the twentieth of the month, when he would

receive his pay. When the lieutenant did not send the money on the

twentieth, Ivanov went to his house to ask for what was due to him. The

officer promised to pay the next day, but the next day he again put him

off till the next, and in short, fed him for a long time, as is said, on

"tomorrows". Ivanov, however, went to him time after time to ask for

the money, as it represented for him a very large sum. It was almost all he

possessed—consisting of the entire savings of his wife, a laundress, who

for many years had put it away kopek by kopek, and had given it to her

husband to buy material for the lieutenant's boots. Besides, Ivanov kept

coming for his money because he had six small children to feed.

'At last Lieutenant K grew annoyed at Ivanov's insistence and told his

orderly to say he was not at home; then he simply had him driven off,

and threatened to have him sent to prison. Finally the lieutenant told his

orderly to give Ivanov a good thrashing if he came again.

‘ The orderly, a kindly man, did not beat Ivanov, as his master had

ordered, but, wanting to persuade him in a friendly way not to annoy the

lieutenant with his repeated visits, invited him into the kitchen to talk.

Ivanov sat down on a stool, and the orderly began to pluck a goose for

roasting. Seeing this, Ivanov remarked:

"So! Our lords and masters eat roast goose every day and do not pay

their debts, and meanwhile my children go hungry!"

'At this moment Lieutenant K happened to come into the kitchen and,

overhearing what Ivanov had said, grew so furious that he took a large

beetroot from the table and struck Ivanov in the face so hard that he

knocked his eye out.

'The second incident,' continued Bogachevsky, 'was, so to speak, the

reverse of the first one: a certain Lieutenant Makarov could not pay his

debt to a certain Captain Mashvelov, and so he shot himself.

'It must be said that this Mashvelov was an inveterate gambler and

also a great card-sharper. Not a day passed without his fleecing

someone; it was obvious to all that he played a crooked game.

'A short time ago Lieutenant Makarov was playing cards with some

officers, among them Mashvelov, and he lost not only all his own

money, but also a sum borrowed from this Mashvelov on the promise to

return it to him in three days. As the sum was a large one, Lieutenant

Makarov could not raise it in three days, and, being unable to keep his

word, decided to shoot himself rather than stain his honour as an officer.

'Both these events occurred on account of debts. In one case, the

creditor has his eye knocked out by the debtor, and in the other case, the

debtor shoots himself. Why? Simply because everyone round Makarov

would have severely condemned him for not paying his debt to the

sharper Mashvelov, whereas in the case of Ivanov, the shoemaker, even

if all his children were to starve to death—that would be quite in the

order of things, for the code of honour of an officer is not concerned

with the payment of his debts to a shoemaker.

'And in general, I repeat, acts of this kind occur simply because

people stuff their children, while the future man is still being formed in

them, with all sorts of conventions, and so prevent Nature herself from

developing in them that conscience which has taken form over

thousands of years of struggle by our ancestors against just such

conventions.'

Bogachevsky often urged me not to adopt any conventions, either

those of my immediate circle or those of any other people.

He said: 'From the conventions with which one is stuffed subjective

morality is formed, but for real life objective morality is needed, which

comes only from conscience.

'Conscience is everywhere the same. As it is here, so it is in St.

Petersburg, America, Kamchatka, and in the Solomon Islands. Today

you happen to be here, but tomorrow you may be in America; if you

have a real conscience and live according to it, it will always be well

with you wherever you may be.

'You are still quite young; you have not yet begun life. Everybody

here may now call you badly brought up; you may not know how to bow

correctly, or to say the right thing in the proper manner, but this does not

matter if only when you grow up and begin to live you have in yourself

a real conscience, that is, the foundation of objective morality.

'Subjective morality is a relative conception, and if you are filled with

relative conceptions, then when you are grown up you will always and

everywhere act and judge other people according to the conventional

views and notions you have acquired. You must learn not what people

round you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience

bids you. An untrammelled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together. But for the present, until your own conscience is formed, live according to the commandment of our Teacher Jesus Christ:


 "Do not do to others what you would not wish them to do to you." '

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