Criminal Law and Ethics:
Let us also distinguish criminal law from ethics.
Ethics is a study of the supreme good.
It deals with absolute ideal, whereas positive morality deals with current public opinion, and law is concerned with social relationship of men rather than with the individual's excellence of character.
The distinction between law and morality has been discussed already.
We may now bring out the distinction between law and ethics by citing two illustrations. Your neighbour, for instance, is dying of starvation.
Your granary is full. Is there any law that requires you to help him out of your plenty?
It may be ethically wrong or morally wrong;
but not criminally wrong. Then again, you are standing on the bank of a tank.
A woman is filling her pitcher. All of a sudden she gets an epileptic fit. You do not try to save her.
You may have committed an ethical wrong or a moral wrong, but will you be punished criminally?
However, with the growth of the humanitarian ideas,
it is hoped that the conception of one's duty to others will gradually expand, and a day might arrive when it may have to conform-to the ideal conduct which the great Persian Poet. Sheikh Saadi, aimed at, viz.:
“If you see a blind man proceeding to a well, if you are silent, you commit a crime.”
This was what the poet said in the 13th century.
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