Herbert slipped the ring of Gyges on to his finger and was immediately startled by what he saw: nothing. He had become invisible.
For the first few hours, he wandered around testing his new invisibility. Once, he accidentally coughed and found that in the ears of the world, he was silent too. But he had physical bulk, and would leave an impression on a soft cushion or create an unexplained obstacle for those seeking to walk through him.
Once he became used to what it was like to live invisibly, Herbert started to think about what he could do next. To his shame, the ideas that popped into his head first were not entirely savoury. He could, for instance, loiter in the women’s showers or changing rooms. He could quite easily steal. He could also trip up the obnoxious suits who shouted into their mobile phones.
But he wanted to resist such base temptations and so tried to think of what good deeds he could do. The opportunities here, however, were less obvious. And for how long could he resist the temptation to take advantage of his invisibility in less edifying ways? All it would take would be one moment of weakness and there he’d be: peeking at naked women or stealing money. Did he have the strength to resist?
Source: Book two of The Republic by Plato (360 BCE)
It is tempting to see the ring of Gyges as a test of moral fibre: how you would act under the cloak of invisibility reveals your true moral nature. But how fair is it to judge someone by how they would act when confronted by more temptation than most people could resist? If we are honest, imagining ourselves with the ring may reveal that we are disappointingly corruptible, but that is not the same as saying we are actually corrupt.
Perhaps what the mythical ring enables us to do is have sympathy with the devil, or at least some of his minor cohorts. Celebrities behaving badly, for example, attract our disapproval. But how can we imagine what it is like to have enormous wealth, endless opportunities for indulgence and sycophantic hangers-on ready to pander to our every whim? Can we be so sure that we too wouldn’t end up disgracing ourselves?
Some insight into our current moral condition may be provided by considering how we would act with the ring at our disposal for a limited period. It is one thing to confess that, given time, we might give in to the allure of clandestine voyeurism; it is quite another to think that the first thing we’d do is head off down to the nearest gym’s changing rooms. Someone who would follow that path is separated from actual peeping Toms only by fear or lack of opportunity.
The ring thus helps us to distinguish the difference between things we genuinely believe are wrong and those that only convention, reputation or timidity stop us from doing. It strips down our personal morality to its essence, removing the veneer of values we only pretend to hold. What we are left with might be distressingly thin. We probably wouldn’t engage in random murder, but one or two loathed enemies might not be safe. Many feminists would argue that far too many men would use the opportunity to rape. We may not turn into career thieves, but property rights might suddenly look less inviolable.
Is that too pessimistic? If you ask people how they think others would behave with the ring and how they themselves would, you will often find a stark contrast. Others would turn into amoralists; we would retain our integrity. When we respond in this way, are we underestimating our fellow human beings, or are we overestimating ourselves?
See also
| 34. | Don’t blame me |
| 54. | The elusive I |
| 66. | The forger |
| 85. | The nowhere man |