When you say a person has integrity what are you saying about him?

Carter: As I define it, integrity involves three steps. The first is to discern what is right and wrong. Discernment takes time and emotional energy. It's much easier to follow the crowd. The second step is to struggle to live according to the sense of right and wrong you have discerned. The third is to be willing to say what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Your book places great weight on discern ment. Is this the step on which Americans tend to trip?

Americans tend to ignore the first step. We think we're too busy, too tired to do moral reflection. But the second step is the hardest. In their hearts many people know the right thing, but they won't do it because they don't want to take the pressure.

I had a student who had been adamantly pro-choice who changed her mind and decided she was pro-life. But she wasn't going to tell anybody because her friends wouldn't like her. That's not a unique example.

Is this human desire to be liked the root of America's "integrity shortage," or are other cultural forces at work in our souls?

There are a lot cultural forces. Let me mention three. First, integrity is expensive. It ultimately involves sacrificing something. An example of integrity is the person who says to the boss, "I can't work late tonight because I promised my daug hter I'd come to a play, and I'm not going to break my promise." When I give that example people say to me, "But what if he gets fired?" A good question, and he's got to take it into account. It's unfortunate that he has to make this choice, but a lot of choices about integrity are material in this sense, or they come in response to a variety of financial pressures.

And the other two forces?

They are ideological, not material. Ideological str and number one is our individualism. I believe deeply in personal freedom. But we now have a sense of individualism in America that is unmediated by any sense of moral norms. This reduces moral judgment to something very similar to desire. So instead of searching for what is right, we are searching for how we can do what we want.

What's missing is some sense of the transcendent, whether it be God, the law or some commitment to the good.

Yes, and the third force is our great difficulty having moral conversation. It's difficult today to have a moral discussion rather than a constitutional discussion. Take the young man who attended his classes at the University of Califo rnia with no clothes on. When people criticized him his response was, "I've a constitutional right to do it." As a constitutional scholar, I have serious doubts about that. But even if he's right, that is not an answer to the argument that it's morally wr ong.

If we can't have moral conversations without invoking the Constitution as a shield for criticism, we can't develop the moral norms that we need to guide individual choices. We end up with a situation where we can't have a conversation in which you have an opinion that what I'm doing is wrong. And that's no way to run a serious society.

Integrity is a joint enterprise; it requires community discussion?

And that's why I say that although it's not necessary to be religious to have integrity, it is easier. A key element of integrity is the willingness to stand up and be counted for what's good and right even if you face criticism or suffering. That is easier to do if you have a faith community to draw strength from than if you are just an individual. It's no accident that the civil rights movement began in the churches. The faith community, committed to moral truth, provided the support needed to stand up in the face of the dogs, the guns and jails.

Your definition of integrity stresses the need to discern what is good and right. Doesn't this assume some common set of values upon which we can refl ect together? But in a society as diverse as the United States we don't seem to have this meeting ground.

There is a broad range of issues on which we have to be willing to say that people of integrity can take different sides. I happen to be an opponent of the death penalty. I think that position has some integrity to it. I know a lot of thoughtful people with plenty of integrity who are in favor of the death penalty. I don't think they are evil or morally worse than I am. I do n't think they are stupid. They've reflected and reached a different view.

I also believe there is a small set of issues about which a person of integrity can hold only one position. For example, we can say racial hatred and mass slaughter are wrong. We know that from history. We don't need to agree on a philosophical system to agree on that.

There is a lot of moral agreement in America. The amount of moral disagreement is exaggerated because the media focuses on a handful of issues on which people have sharply different views--abortion, gay rights, affirmative action. But beyond this there is a large core on which we can reach agreement. These teachings are common to various religious traditions. They also show up in public opinion surveys and in the Constitution. For example: respecting others, believing in family, not lying or stealing, being courageous.

The "Golden Rule"--treat people the way you want to be treated--would seem to be part of this core.

That's a good example. And even if we have trouble living it, we still believe we should aspire to it.

What aspects of our lives should we pay much closer attention to if we are to live with integrity?

Integrity begins in the home. I say I love my wife and my children, but do I manifest love? Am I ever cruel? Am I short with them? Am I able to apologize? Can I make the soft answer to turn away wrath?

Then the job: What does it mean to have integrity there? Professionalism and the satisfaction of a job well done are parts of it. But it also means doing the moral searching needed to be sure that what we are doing for our emp loyers are the right things to do.

One of the most common ways we fail to live with integrity involves the expedient lie, the one that greases the wheels and avoids problems.

And one lie leads to another, and suddenly we are living in a web of lies. We end up living enormously skeptical lives. It's unreasonable for us to demand of ourselves and others the kind of perfect integrity that no mortal has. But I do suggest we pay close att ention to it. Otherwise it's pointless for us to demand integrity of the media or politicians when we don't demand it of ourselves.

There is this city of Brahman (the human body) and in it there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus, and within can be found a small space. This little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars; fire and lightening and wind are there, and all that now is and is not yet - all that is contained within it.

• Chandogya Upanishad

AUTUMN 1970. Edmund falls in love with Clare, a classmate, and believes his love is returned. He is the envy of all his friends, but on Christmas Eve a stranger, Cole, arrives at the Oak Pub and seduces Clare....

XIII

... so I called and signalled but she didn't hear, or look, in fact; she had hold of three glasses and backed into the crowd. "You got them, Clare?"

I heard myself cry out in a boy's voice, as if her name were slipping. I would wait God only knows how long for any service

now it was near eleven. In my seat was Clare when I got back, and on her stool the NAVY man who had arrived that night,

who wore all dark and wasn't from our school, who lit his cigarette and was engaged in deep talk with another listening girl,

I noticed, on his other side. I reached our table and knelt down alongside Clare, the other side from him. Gently I touched

her hand and she looked down. She said, "He's here, he's coming through the rye," and carried on, quarreling with Nick about some war

he said was not "true war." The NAVY man was scrutinizing him. The atmosphere was purest smoke through which I led my hand

towards her thigh, gold-coloured and so near, and let it rest and have her move away as if earth had itself marooned me here

by quickening. The stranger had his say about all kinds of things I couldn't follow, and "Time!" was called to a great choral cry

of disappointment. "Christmas Day tomorrow," a girl proclaimed unsteadily. The whole gang was round our table. "To the Mallow!"

Stan was shouting. "To the Protest Wall!" Now everyone was out in the yellow mist and clapping in the chill. "His name is Cole,"

Clare quietly was telling me. "It is?" I wondered. "Whose is Cole?" "My heart's delight, obviously." I looked her in the eyes,

but clashed with shields and stood back in the night. "Now don't forget," said Clare, "it's still our plan. Don't think you aren't still in my care, all right?"

Her lips were open, she had silky skin, her breaths were cherry-flavouring the air, and each was marvellous and none was mine:

and every step I took away from there put off a light, until the night was bare.