GUILT

Every man faces a daily battle between what he knows he should do and what he does

Animals do not feel guilt and shame. Those are human emotions resulting from cognitive awareness.

Through training a dog learns that certain behavior results in punishment. He refrains from jumping on the couch to avoid a smack on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper, not because he knows that it is “wrong” to do so. There is no such thing as “wrong” in the dog mind—wrong is a human concept.

Like a dog, a child will refrain from certain behavior solely to avoid punishment. This will start him off on the way he should go. But eventually (hopefully) it is not the threat of punishment that governs his actions, but the fact that he perceives that the behavior is unjust, dishonest, or immoral. As an adult then, he will try to refrain from wrong because he knows that it is wrong.

And yet, try as we might, we do wrong anyway. We may get away with it and avoid human punishment, but we receive something worse—guilt and shame—which reinforces our determination to try again tomorrow do what we know we should do.

Every man faces a daily battle between what he knows he should do and what he does