Conscience

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The name

In English we have done with a Latin word what neither the Latins nor the French have done: we have doubled the term, making "conscience" stand for the moral department and leaving "consciousness" for the universal field of objects about which we become aware. In Cicero we have to depend upon the context for the specific limitation to theethical area, as in the sentence: "mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium sermo" (Att., XII, xxviii, 2). Sir W. Hamilton has discussed how far we can be said to be conscious of the outer objects which weknow, and how far "consciousness" ought to be held a term restricted to states of self or self-consciousness. (See Thiele, Die Philosophie des Selbstbewusstseins,Berlin, 1895.) In the two wordsBewusstsein andGewissen theGermans have made a serviceable distinction answering to our "consciousness" and "conscience". The ancients mostly neglected such a discrimination. The Greeks often usedphronesis where we should use "conscience", but the two terms are far from coincident. They also usedsuneidesis, which occurs repeatedly for the purpose in hand both in the Old and theNew Testament. The Hebrews had no formalpsychology, though Delitzsch has endeavoured to find one in Scripture. There the heart often stands for conscience.

Origin of conscience in the race and in the individual

Of anthropologists some do and some do not accept the Biblical account of man's origin; and the former class, admitting that Adam's descendants might soon have lost the traces of their higher descent, are willing to hear, with no pledge of endorsing, what the latter class have to say on the assumption of the human development even from an animal ancestry, and on the further assumption that in the use of evidences they may neglect sequence of time and place. It is not maintained by any serious student that the Darwinian pedigree is certainly accurate: it has the value of a diagram giving some notion of the lines along which forces are supposed to have acted. Not, then, as accepting for fact, but as using it for a very limited purpose, we may give a characteristic sketch ofethical development as suggested in the last chapter of Dr. L. T. Hobhouse's "Morals in Evolution". It is a conjectural story, very like what other anthropologists offer for what it is worth and not for fully certifiedscience.

Ethics is conduct or regulated life; and regulation has a crude beginning in the lowest animal life as a response to stimulus, as reflex action, as useful adaptation to environment. Thus the amoeba doubles itself round its food in the water and lives; it propagates by self-division. At another stage in the animal series we find blind impulses for the benefit of life and its propagation taking a more complex shape, until something like instinctive purpose is displayed. Useful actions are performed, not apparently pleasurable in themselves, yet with good in the sequel which cannot have been foreseen. The care of the animal for its young, the provision for the need of its future offspring is a kind of foreshadowed sense ofduty.St. Thomas is bold to follow the terminology of Roman lawyers, and to assert a sort of morality in the pairing and the propagating of the higher animals: "ius naturale est quod natura omnia animalia docuit". (It is thenatural law which nature has taught all animals.--"In IV Sent.", dist. xxxiii, a. 1, art. 4.) Customs are formed under the pressures and the interactions of actual living. They are fixed by heredity, and they await the analysis and the improvements of nascent reason. With the advent of man, in his rudest state--however he came to be in that state, whether by ascent or descent--there dawns a conscience, which, in the development theory, will have to pass through many stages. At first its categories of right and wrong are in a very fluid condition, keeping no fixed form, and easily intermixing, as in the chaos of a child's dreams, fancies, illusions, and fictions. The requirements of social life, which becomes the great moralizer of social action, are continually changing, and with them ethics varies its adaptations. Associety advances, its ethics improves. "The lines on which custom is formed are determined in eachsociety by the pressures, the thousand interactions of those forces of individual character and social relationship, which never cease remoulding until they have made men's loves and hates, their hopes and fears for themselves and their children, their dread of unseen agencies, their jealousies, their resentments, their antipathies, their sociability and dim sense of mutual dependence all their qualities good and bad, selfish and sympathetic, social and anti-social." (Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 262.) The grasp of experience widens and power of analysis increases, till, in a people like the Greeks, we come upon thinkers who can distinctly reflect on human conduct, and can put in practice the gnothi seauton (know thyself), so that henceforth the method of ethics is secured for all times, with indefinite scope left for its better and better application. "Here we have reached the level ofphilosophical or spiritualreligions, systems which seek to concentrate all experience in one focus, and to illuminate all morality from one centre, thought, as ever, becoming more comprehensive as it becomes more explicit". (ibid., p. 266.)

What is said of the race is applied to the individual, as in him customary rules acquireethical character by the recognition of distinct principles and ideals, all tending to a final unity or goal, which for the mere evolutionist is left very indeterminate, but for theChristian has adequate definition in a perfect possession ofGod byknowledge andlove, without the contingency of further lapses fromduty. To come to the fullness ofknowledge possible in this world is for the individual a process of growth. The brain at first has not the organization which would enable it to be the instrument of rational thought: probably it is a necessity of ourmind's nature that we should not start with the fully formed brain but that the first elements ofknowledge should be gathered with the gradations of the developing structure. In the morally goodfamily the child slowly learns right conduct by imitation, by instruction, by sanction in the way of rewards and punishments. Bain exaggerates the predominance of the last named element as the source whence the sense ofobligation comes, and therein he is like Shaftesbury (Inquiry, II, n. 1), who sees in conscience only the reprover. This view is favoured also by Carlyle in his "Essay on Characteristics", and by Dr. Mackenzie in his "Manual of Ethics" (3rd ed., III, 14), where we read: "I should prefer to say simply that conscience is a feeling of pain accompanying and resulting from our non-conformity to principle."Newman also has put the stress on the reproving office of conscience. Carlyle says we should not observe that we had a conscience if we had never offended. Green thinks thatethical theory is mostly of negative use for conduct. (Prolegomena to Ethics, IV, 1.) It is better to keep in view both sides of thetruth and say that the mind ethically developed comes to a sense of satisfaction in right doing and of dissatisfaction in wrongdoing, and that the rewards and the punishments judiciously assigned to the young have for their purpose, asAristotle puts it, to teach the teachable how to find pleasure in what ought to please and displeasure in what ought to displease. The immature mind must be given external sanctions before it can reach the inward. Its earliest glimmering ofduty cannot be clear light: it begins by distinguishing conduct as nice or as nasty and naughty: as approved or disapproved byparents and teachers, behind whom in a dim way stands the oft-mentionedGod, conceived, not only in ananthropomorphic, but in a nepiomorphic way, not correct yet more correct than Caliban's speculations about Setebos. The perception ofsin in the genuine sense is gradually formed until the age which we roughly designate as the seventh year, and henceforth the agent enters upon the awful career of responsibility according to the dictates of conscience. On grounds notethical but scholasticallytheological,St. Thomas explains a theory that the unbaptizedperson at the dawn of reason goes through a first crisis in moral discrimination which turns simply on the acceptance or rejection ofGod, and entails mortalsin in case of failure. (I-II:89:6)

What conscience is in the soul of man?

It is often a good maxim not to mind for a time how a thing came to be, but to see what it actually is. To do so in regard to conscience before we take up the history ofphilosophy in its regard is wise policy, for it will give us some cleardoctrine upon which to lay hold, while we travel through a region perplexed by much confusion of thought. The following points are cardinal:

The philosophy of conscience considered historically

In pre-Christian times

The earliest written testimonies that we can consult tell us of recognized principles inmorals, and if we confine our attention to the good which we find and neglect for the present the inconstancy and the admixture of many evils, we shall experience a satisfaction in the history. ThePersians stood for virtue against vice in their support ofAhura Mazda againstAhriman; and it was an excellence of theirs to rise above "independent ethics" to the conception ofGod as the rewarder and the punisher. They even touched thedoctrine ofChrist's saying, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his ownsoul?" when to the question, what is the worth of the whole creation displayed before us, theZend-Avesta has the reply: "the man therein who is delivered fromevil in thought, word, and deed: he is the most valuable object on earth." Here conscience was clearly enlightened. Of the moral virtues among thePersians truthfulness was conspicuous. Herodotus says that the youth were taught "to ride and shoot with the bow", and "to speak thetruth". The unveracious Greeks, who admired the wiles of an Odysseus, were surprised atPersianveracity (Herodotus, I, 136, 138); and it may be that Herodotus is not fair on this head to Darius (III, 72). TheHindus in the Vedas do not rise high, but inBrahminism there is something more spiritual, and still more in theBuddhist reform on its best side, considered apart from the pessimistic view of life upon which itsfalse asceticism was grounded.Buddhism had ten prohibitive commandments: three concerning the body, forbiddingmurder, theft, and unchastity; four concerning speech, forbidding lying,slander, abusive language, and vain conversation; and three concerning the mind internally,covetousness, malicious thoughts, and the doubting spirit. The Egyptians show the workings of conscience. In the "Book of the Dead" we find anexamination of conscience, or rather profession of innocence, before the Supreme Judge after death. Two confessions are given enunciating most of the virtues (chap. cxxv): reverence forGod;duties to the dead; charity to neighbours;duties of superiors and subjects; care forhumanlife and limb; chastity, honesty, truthfulness, and avoidance ofslander; freedom fromcovetousness. The Assyro-Babylonian monuments offer us many items on the favourable side; nor could the people whence issued the Code ofHammurabi, at a date anterior to theMosaic legislation by perhaps seven hundred years, be ethically undeveloped. If the Code ofHammurabi has noprecepts of reverence toGod corresponding with the first three Commandments of theMosaic Law, at least its preface contains a recognition ofGod's supremacy. InChinaConfucius (c. 500 B. C.), in connection with anidea ofheaven, delivered a high morality; andMencius (c. 300 B. C.) developed this code of uprightness and benevolence as "Heaven's appointment". Greek ethics began to pass from its gnomic condition whenSocrates fixed attention on thegnothi seauton in the interests of moral reflection. Soon followedAristotle, who put thescience on a lasting basis, with the great drawback of neglecting the theistic side and consequently the fulldoctrine ofobligation. Neither for "obligation" nor for "conscience" had the Greeks a fixed term. Still the pleasures of a good conscience and the pains of anevil one were well set forth in the fragments collected by Stobaeus peri tou suneidotos. Penandros, asked what wastrue freedom, answered: "a good conscience" (Gaisford's Stobaeus, vol. I, p. 429).

In the Christian Fathers

The patristic treatment of ethics joined togetherHoly Scripture and the classical authors ofpaganism; no system was reached, but each Father did what was characteristic.Tertullian was a lawyer and spoke in legal terms: especially hisMontanism urged him to inquire which were the mortalsins, and thus he started for future investigators a good line of inquiry.Clement of Alexandria was allegoric and mystic: a combiner of Orientalism, Hellenism,Judaism, andChristianity in their bearing on the several virtues and vices. The apologists, in defending theChristian character, dwelt on the marks ofethical conduct.St. Justin attributed this excellence to the Divine Logos, and thought that to Him, through Moses, thepaganphilosophers were indebted (First Apology 44). SimilarlyOrigen accounted for pre-Christian examples ofChristian virtue. As a Roman skilled in legal administrationSt. Ambrose was largely guided by Latin versions of Greek ethics, as is very well illustrated by his imitation in style of Cicero's "De Officiis", which he made the title of his own work. He discusseshonestum et utile (I, ix);decorum, orto prepon as exhibited inHoly Scripture (x); various degrees ofgoodness, mediocre and perfect, in connection with the text, "if thou wilt be perfect" (xi); the passions of hot youth (xvii). Subsequent chapters dwell on the various virtues, asfortitude inwar and its allied quality,courage inmartyrdom (xl, xli). The second book opens with a discussion of beatitude, and then returns to the different virtues. It is the pupil of St. Ambrose,St. Augustine, who is, perhaps, the most important of the Fathers in the development of the Christian doctrine of conscience, not so much on account of his frequent discourses about moral subjects, as because of thePlatonism which he drank in before hisconversion, and afterwards got rid of only by degrees. The abiding result to theScholastic system was that many writers traced their ethics andtheology more or less to innateideas, or innate dispositions, or Divine illuminations, after the example ofSt. Augustine. Even inSt. Thomas, who was so distinctly anAristotelean empiricist, some fancy that they detect occasional remnants ofAugustinianism on itsPlatonic side.

Before leaving the Fathers we may mentionSt. Basil as one who illustrates a theorizing attitude. He was sound enough in recognizingsin to be graver and less grave; yet in the stress of argument against somepersons who seemed to admit only the worst offenses againstGod to be realsins, he ventured without approving ofStoicdoctrine, to point out a sort of equality in allsin, so far as allsin is a disobedience toGod (Hom. de Justitia Dei, v-viii). LaterAbelard and recently Dr. Schell abused this suggestion. But it has had no influence in any way like that ofSt. Augustine'sPlatonism, of which a specimen may be seen inSt. Bonaventure, when he is treating precisely of conscience, in a passage very useful as shedding light on a subsequent part of this article. Some habits, he says, areacquired, someinnate as regardsknowledge of singulars andknowledge ofuniversals. "Quum enim ad cognitionem duo concurrant necessario, videlicet praesentia cognoscibilis et lumen quo mediante de illo judicamus, habitus cognoscitivi sunt quodammodo nobisinnati ratione luminis animo inditi; sunt etiam acquisiti ratione speciei"--"For as two things necessarily concur for cognition, namely, the presence of something cognoscible, and the light by which we judge concerning it, cognoscitive habits are in a certain senseinnate, by reason of the light wherewith the mind is endowed; and they are alsoacquired, by reason of the species." ("Comment. in II Lib. Sent.", dist. xxxix, art. 1, Q. ii. Cf.St. Thomas, "De Veritate", Q. xi, art. 1: "Principia dicuntur innata quae statim lumine intellectus agentis cognoscuntur per species a sensibus abstractas".--Principles are called innate when they are known at once by the light of the activeintellect through the species abstracted from the senses.) Then comes the very noticeable and easily misunderstood addition a little later: "si quae sunt cognoscibilia per sui essentiam, non per speciem, respectu talium poterit dici conscientia esse habitus simpliciter innatus, utpote respectu upote respectu hujus quod est Deum amare et timere; Deus enim non cognoscitur per similitudinem a sensu, immo 'Dei notitia naturaliter est nobis inserta', sicut dicit Augustinus"--"if there are some things cognoscible through their very essence and not through the species, conscience, with regard to such things, may be called a habit simply innate, as, for example, with regard to loving and servingGod; forGod is not known by sense through an image; rather, 'theknowledge ofGod is implanted in us by nature', asAugustine says" (Tractate 106 on the Gospel of John, no. 4; "Confess.", X, xx, xxix; "De Lib. Arbitr.", I, xiv, xxxi; "De Mor. Eccl.", iii, iv;On the Holy Trinity XIII.3-6; "Joan. Dam. de Fide", I, i, iii). We must remember that St. Bonaventure is not only atheologian but also a mystic, supposing in manoculus carnis, oculus rationis andoculus contemplationis (the eye of the flesh, the eye of reason, and the eye of contemplation); and that he so seriously regards man's power to prove by arguments theexistence of God as to devoted his labour to explaining thatlogical conviction is consistent withfaith in the same existence (Comm. in III Sent., dist. xxiv, art. 1, Q. iv). All these matters are highly significant for those who take up any thorough examination of the question as to what theScholastics thought about man having a conscience by his very nature as a rational being. The point recurs frequently inScholastic literature, to which we must next turn.

In Scholastic times

It will help to make intelligible the subtle and variable theories which follow, if it be premised that theScholastics are apt to puzzle readers by mixing up with their philosophy of reason a real or apparent apriorism, which is calledAugustinianism,Platonism, or Mysticism.

Abelard, in his "Ethics", or "Nosce Teipsum", does not plunge us into these depths, and yet he taught such an indwelling of the Holy Ghost in virtuouspagans as too unrestrictedly to make their virtues to beChristian. He placed morality so much in the inward act that he denied the morality of the outward, andsin he placed not in the objectively disordered deed but in contempt forGod, in which opinion he was imitated by Prof. Schell. Moreover he opened a way to wrong opinions by callingfree will "the free judgment about the will". In hiserrors, however, he was not so wholly astray as careless reading might lead some to infer. It was withAlexander of Hales that discussions which some will regard as the tedious minutiae ofScholastic speculation began. The origin lay in the introduction fromSt. Jerome (in Ezech., I, Bk. I, ch. 1) of the termsynteresis orsynderesis. There the commentator, having treated three of the mystic animals in the Prophecy as symbolizing respectively threePlatonic powers of thesoul —to epithumetikon (the appetitive),to thumikon (the irascible), andto logikon (the rational) — uses the fourth animal, the eagle, to represent what he callssunteresis. The last, according to the texts employed by him to describe it, is asupernaturalknowledge: it is the Spirit Who groans in man (Romans 8:26), the Spirit who alone knows what is in man (1 Corinthians 2:11), the Spirit who with the body and thesoul forms the Pauline trichotomy of1 Thessalonians 5:23.Alexander of Hales neglects this limitation to thesupernatural, and takessynteresis as neither apotentia alone, nor ahabitus alone but apotentia habitualis, something native, essential, indestructible in thesoul, yet liable to be obscured and baffled. It resides both in the intelligence and in the will: it is identified with conscience, not indeed on its lower side, as it is deliberative and makes concrete applications, but on its higher side as it is wholly general in principle,intuitive, alumen innatum in theintellect and a native inclination to good in the will,voluntas naturalis non deliberativa (Summa Theologica I-II:71 to I-II:77). St. Bonaventure, the pupil, follows on the same lines in his "Commentarium in II Sent." (dist. xxxix), with the difference that he locates thesynteresis ascalor et pondus in the will only distinguishing it from the conscience in the practicalintellect, which he calls an innate habit--"rationale iudicatorium, habitus cognoscitivus moralium principiorum"-- "a rational judgment, a habit cognoscitive of moral principles". Unlike Alexander he retains the name conscience for descent to particulars: "conscientia non solum consistit in universali sed etiam descendit ad particularia deliberativa" --"conscience not only consists in the universal but also descends to deliberative particulars". As regards general principles in the conscience, the habits are innate: while as regards particular applications, they are acquired (II Sent., dist xxxix, art. 1, Q; ii).

As forming a transition from theFranciscan to theDominican School we may take one whom theServite Order can at least claim as a great patron, though he seems not to have joined their body,Henry of Ghent. He places conscience in theintellect, not in the affective part--"non ad affectivam pertinet"--by which theScholastics meant generally the will without special reference to feeling or emotion as distinguished in the modern sense from will. WhileNicholas of Cusa described the Divine illumination as acting in blind-born man (virtus illuminati coecinati qui per fidem visum acquirit),Henry of Ghent required only assistances to human sight. Therefore he supposed:

For our purpose we specially note this: "conscientia ad partem animae cognitivam non pertinet, sed ad affectivam"--"conscience belongs not to the cognitive part of the mind, but to the affective" (Quodlibet., I, xviii).St. Thomas, leading theDominicans, placessynteresis not in the will but in theintellect, and he applies the term conscience to the concrete determinations of the general principle which thesynteresis furnishes: "Byconscience theknowledge given throughsynteresis is applied to particular actions". ("De Verit.", Q. xvii, a. 2.; Cf.Summa Theologica, Q. lxxix, a. 13; "III Sent.", dist. xiv, a. 1, Q. ii; "Contra Gent.", II, 59.) Albertus agrees with St. Thomas in assigning to theintellect thesynteresis, which he unfortunately derives fromsyn andhoerere (haerens in aliquo) (Summa Theol., Pt. II, Q. xcix, memb. 2, 3; Summa de Creaturis, Pt. II, Q. lxix, a. 1). Yet he does not deny all place to the will: "Est rationis practicae . . . non sine voluntate naturali, sed nihil est voluntatis deliberativae (Summa Theol., Pt. II, Q. xcix, memb. 1). The preference of theFranciscan School for the prominence of will, and the preference of theThomistic School for the prominence ofintellect is characteristic. (SeeScotus, IV Sent., dist. xlix, Q. iv.) Often this preference is less significant than it seems. Fouillée, the great defender of theidée force--idea as the active principle--allows in a controversy with Spencer that feeling and will may be involved in theidea. Having shown howScholasticism began its research into conscience as a fixed terminology, we must leave the matter there, adding only three heads under which occasion was given for seriouserrors outside theCatholic tradition:

Anti-Scholastic schools

The history of ethics outside theScholastic domain, so far as it is antagonistic, has its extremes in Monism orPantheism on the one side and inMaterialism on the other.

Spinoza

Spinoza is a type of thePantheistic opposition. His views areerroneous inasmuch as they regard all things in the light of a fated necessity, with nofree will in eitherGod or man; no preventableevil in the natural course of things; no purposed good of creation; no individual destiny orimmortality for the responsible agent: indeed no strict responsibility and no strict retribution by reward or punishment. On the other hand many ofSpinoza's sayings if lifted into the theistic region, may be transformed into something noble. The theist, taking upSpinoza's phraseology in a converted sense, may, under this new interpretation, view all passionate action, allsinful choice, as an "inadequate idea of things", as "the preference of a part to the detriment of the whole", while all virtue is seen as an "adequateidea" taking inman's "full relation to himself as a whole, to humansociety and toGod". Again,Spinoza'samor Dei intellectualis becomes finally, when duly corrected, theBeatific Vision, after having been the darker understanding ofGod enjoyed by Holy men before death, wholove all objects in reference toGod.Spinoza was not anantinomian in conduct; he recommended and practiced virtues. He was better than his philosophy on its bad side, and worse than his philosophy on its good side after it has been improved byChristian interpretation.

Hobbes

Hobbes stands for ethics on aMaterialistic basis. Tracing all human action to self-love, he had to explain the generous virtues as the more respectable exhibitions of that quality when modified by social life. He set variousschools of antagonistic thought devising hypotheses to account for disinterested action in man. The CambridgePlatonists unsatisfactorily attacked him on the principle of their eponymousphilosopher, supposing the innatenoemata to rule the empiricalaisthemata by the aid of what Henry More called a "boniform faculty", which tasted "the sweetness and savour of virtue". This calling in of a special faculty had imitators outside thePlatonic School; for example in Hutcheson, who had recourse to Divine "implantations" of benevolent disposition and moral sense, which remind us somewhat ofsynteresis as imperfectly described byAlexander of Hales. A robust reliance on reason to proveethicaltruth as itproved mathematicaltruths, by inspection and analysis, characterized the opposition which Dr. Samuel Clarke presented to Hobbes. It was a fashion of the age to treat philosophy with mathematical rigour; but very different was the "geometrical ethics" ofSpinoza, the necessarian, from that ofDescartes, the libertarian, who thought thatGod'sfree will chose even the ultimate reasons of right and wrong and might have chosen otherwise. If Hobbes has his representatives in theUtilitarians, the CambridgePlatonists have their representatives in more or less of theschool of which T. H. Green is a leading light. A universalinfinite mind seeks to realize itself finitely in eachhumanmind or brain, which therefore must seek to free itself from the bondage of mere naturalcausality and rise to the liberty of the spirit, to a complete self-realization in theinfinite Self and after its pattern. What this pattern ultimately is Green cannot say; but he holds that our way towards it at present is through the recognized virtues ofEuropean civilization, together with the cultivation ofscience and art. In the like spirit G.E. Moore finds the ascertainable objects that at present can be called "good in themselves" to be social intercourse and æsthetic delight.

Kant

Kant may stand midway between thePantheistic and the purely Empirical ethics. On the one side he limited ourknowledge, strictly so called, of things good to sense-experiences; but on the other he allowed a practical, regulative system ofideas lifting us up toGod. Duty as referred to Divine commands was religion, not ethics: it was religion, not ethics, to regard moralprecepts in the light of thecommands of God. In ethics these were restricted to the autonomous aspect, that is, to the aspect of them under which the will of each man was its own legislator. Man, the noumenon, not the phenomenon, was his own lawgiver and his own end so far as morality went: anything beyond was outside ethics proper. Again, the objects prescribed as good or forbidden as bad did not enter in among the constituents ofethical quality: they were only extrinsic conditions. The whole of morality intrinsically was in the good will as pure from all content or object of a definite kind, from all definite inclination to benevolence and as deriving its whole dignity from respect for the moral law simply as a moral law, self-imposed, and at the same time universalized for all other autonomousindividuals of the rational order. For each moral agent as noumenal willed that the maxim of his conduct should become a principle for all moral agents.

We have to be careful how in practice we impute consequences to men who holdfalse theories of conscience. In our historical sketch we have foundSpinoza a necessarian or fatalist; but he believed in effort and exhortation as aids to good life. We have seenKant assert the non-morality of Divine precept and of the objective fitness of things, but he found a place for both these elements in his system. Similarly Paulsen gives in the body of his work a mundane ethics quite unaffected by his metaphysical principles as stated in his preface to Book II.Lutherlogically might be inferred to be a thoroughantinomian: he declared the human will to be enslaved, with a natural freedom only for civicduties; he taught a theory of justification which was in spite ofevil deeds; he called nature radically corrupt and forcibly held captive by the lusts of the flesh; he regarded divine grace as a due andnecessary complement tohumannature, which as constituted by mere body andsoul was a nature depraved; his justification was byfaith, not only without works, but even in spite ofevil works which were not imputed. Nevertheless he asserted that the good tree of the faith-justified man must bring forthgoodworks; he condemned vice most bitterly, and exhorted men tovirtue. HenceProtestants can depict aLuther simply the preacher of good, whileCatholics may regard simply the preacher ofevil.Luther has both sides.

Conscience in its practical working

The supremacy of conscience

The supremacy of conscience is a great theme of discourse. "Were its might equal to its right", says Butler, "it would rule the world". WithKant we could say that conscience is autonomously supreme, if againstKant we added that thereby we meant only that everyduty must be brought home to the individual by his own individual conscience, and is to this extent imposed by it; so that even he who follows authority contrary to his own private judgment should do so on his own private conviction that the former has the better claim. If theChurch stands betweenGod and conscience, then in another sense also the conscience is betweenGod and theChurch. Unless a man is conscientiously submissive to theCatholicChurch his subjection is not really a matter of inner morality but is mechanical obedience.

Conscience as a matter of education and perfectibility

As in all other concerns ofeducation, so in the training of conscience we must use the several means. As a check on individual caprice, especially in youth, we must consult the best living authorities and the best traditions of the past. At the same time that we are recipient our own active faculties must exert themselves in the pursuit with a keen outlook for the chances oferror. Really unavoidable mistakes will not count against us; but manyerrors are remotely, when not proximately, preventable. From all our blunders we should learn a lesson. The diligent examiner and corrector of his own conscience has it in his power, by long diligence to reach a great delicacy and responsiveness to the call ofduty and of higher virtue, whereas the negligent, and still more the perverse, may in some sense become dead to conscience. The hardening of the heart and the bad power to put light for darkness and darkness for light are results which may be achieved with only too much ease. Even the best criteria will leave residual perplexities for which provision has to be made in anethical theory of probabilities which will be explained in the articlePROBABILISM. Suffice it to say here that the theory leaves intact the old rule that a man in so acting must judge that he certainly is allowed thus to act, even though sometimes it might be more commendable to do otherwise. In inferring something to be permissible, the extremes of scrupulosity and of laxity have to be avoided.

The approvals and reprovals of conscience

The office of conscience is sometimes treated under too narrow a conception. Some writers, after the manner ofSocrates when he spoke of hisdoemon as rather a restrainer than a promoter of action, assign to conscience the office of forbidding, as others assign to law and government the negativeduty of checking invasion upon individual liberty. Shaftesbury (Inquiry II, 2, 1) regards conscience as the consciousness of wrongdoing, not of rightdoing. Carlyle in his "Essay on Characteristics" asserts that we should have no sense of having a conscience but for the fact that we havesinned; with which view we may compare Green'sidea about a reasoned system of ethics (Proleg., Bk. IV, ch. ii, sect. 311) that its use is negative "to provide a safeguard against the pretext which in a speculative age some inadequate and misapplied theories may afford our selfishness rather than in the way of pointing outduties previously ignored". Others say that an ethics of conscience should no more be hortatory than art should be didactic. Mackenzie (Ethics, 3rd ed., Bk. III, ch. I, sect. 14) prefers to say simply that "conscience is a feeling of pain accompanying and resulting from nonconformity to principle". The suggestion which, by way of contrary, these remarks offer is that we should use conscience largely as an approving and an instigating and an inspiring agency to advance us in the right way. We should not inmorals copy the physicists, who deny all attractive force and limit force tovis a tergo, a push from behind. Nor must we think that the positive side of conscience is exhausted in urgingobligations: it may go on in spite ofKant, beyondduty to works of supererogation. Of course there is a theory which denies the existence of such works on the principle that every one is simply bound to the better and the best if he feels himself equal to the heroic achievement. This philosophy would lay it down that he who can renounce all and give it to the poor is simplyobliged to do so, though a less generous nature is not bound, and may take advantage --if it be an advantage--of its own inferiority. Not such was the way in which Christ put the case: He said hypothetically, "if thou wilt be perfect", and His follower St. Peter said to Ananias "Was not [thy land] thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? . . . Thou hast not lied unto men, but untoGod." (Acts 5:4) We have, then, a sphere ofduty and beyond that a sphere of free virtue, and we include both under the domain of conscience. It is objected that only a prig considers the approving side of his conscience, but that istrue only of the priggish manner, not of the thing itself; for a sound mind may very well seek thejoy which comes from a faithful, generous heart, and make it an effort of conscience that outstripsduty to aim at higher perfection, not under thefalse persuasion that only afterduty has been fulfilled does merit begin, but under thetrue conviction thatduty is meritorious, and that so also isgoodness in excess ofduty. Not that the eye is to be too narrowly fixed on rewards: these are included, while virtue for virtue's sake and for the sake ofGod is carefully cultivated.

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