Huckleberry Finn’s ethics soared above all preachers combined.
As Mark Twain recounts in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck’s religious upbringing required that he return Jim, a runaway slave, to his owner, Miss Watson. But Huck instinctively knows that would be wrong. The right thing would be to assist Jim’s emancipation and enjoyment of his unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Huck ponders Dante’s Inferno that might await him for defying his religious preceptors, but famously declared, “All right then, I’ll go to hell.”
Whose heart is not stirred by such guileless righteousness?
You can never go wrong in the most elevated of ethical universes by doing the right thing.