G. A. Johnston

“ It is of the utmost importance that the child should be trained to stand by his decisions. It is, indeed, often very much easier to maintain our decisions than to arrive at them. But it may on occasion be very difficult to remain true to our choice. More particularly is this the case when the decision was a noble one which involved self-sacrifice. The man who has chosen the straight and narrow path is often tempted to abandon it. "Tasks in hours of insight willed may be through hours of gloom fulfilled." But, in general, a decision once formed tends to maintain itself. ”

“ A man has no right to a private conscience in any matter which he has not taken pains to understand. A man's first duty, then, is to examine the judgment of his conscience, and to make quite certain that he has acquired sufficient knowledge of the question at issue. But if he is satisfied, after full reflection on all the circumstances, that the verdict of his private conscience is right, then he must at all costs obey it. ”

“ Both reason and feeling are comprehended within the self. And conscience is the whole self, as reasoning and feeling, as estimating the rightness and wrongness of actions, in accordance with some moral standard, and with reference to some moral ideal, as sympathising with the various motives which influence it, and as weighing the consequences that will probably follow from its actions. Conscience is simply the moral aspect of personality or self-consciousness. The man's whole personality, when he engages in moral action or makes a moral judgment, is his conscience. ”

“ If my conscience judges that an action which I have committed is wrong, I immediately feel remorse. In addition to this, all moral judgments involve some emotional accompaniments. All moral judgments deal with moral conduct, and however impartial the judgment purports to be, it is always accompanied by the feelings natural to our attitude to the person or persons whose conduct is being judged. Our liking or dislike, our friendship or coolness, our love or hatred for a man will, however hard we try to exclude them, tinge the judgments we pass on his conduct. ”

“ They should be brought into relation to the self as a whole. The self should judge whether they are worthy to be identified with itself or not. If it decides that they are worthy, it should "back" the desires so that they become volitions; and, so far as the ends which it wishes are attainable, it should will the means by which they may be achieved. On the other hand, if desires are unworthy and wishes vain, they should at once be suppressed and denied. It is a source of weakness to the moral life to dally for a moment with desires which are evil or alien to the true self. ”

“ The Education of Conscience. The aim of the education of conscience is the removal of such conflicts as these. In an ideal condition of society each man's conscience would function always and everywhere consistently with itself, and harmoniously with the public or universal conscience. With a view to such an ideal as this, how is conscience to be educated?
(1) The individual conscience should be organised harmoniously. In other words, the self as a whole should be systematised in an all-round development, in which each aspect of the self is allowed an opportunity to grow. ”

“ Eventually, however long the process of deliberation may last, one alternative is chosen. Henceforth this alternative becomes identified with the self. We have come to a decision, and we hold to it. "The most obvious difference between the state of indecision and that of decision is that in the first we do not know what we are going to do, and that in the second we do know what we are going to do. While deliberating, we are making up our mind, and we do not know what our mind is going to be. When we have formed a decision we have come to know our own minds. ”

“ But the difficulty of being good is sometimes due to our ignorance what really is the right thing to do. Now, it is the function of the self, acting as conscience, to tell us what is and what is not the right thing to do. We must therefore go on to ask what exactly we mean by conscience, and what is its place in the moral life. ”

“ The self which told the lie is not considered to be the true self. The conscience that pricked is the real self. Similarly, when we say, "His will was too weak to restrain him from gambling," we might apologise for him on the same grounds, "He was not quite himself when the sudden temptation came to him." His will is identified with his real self. But at the time his real self or will was not strong enough to overcome the sudden temptation. In every case where we commonly distinguish between will and conscience and the self, will and conscience are identified with the true self. ”

“ The theory that conscience is a separate faculty of the mind was strongly defended by Bishop Butler, one of the most honoured names in the history of English Ethics. Butler says that conscience is a faculty of peculiar sanctity, in kind and nature supreme over all others. This faculty, which is purely rational, has absolute and unquestioned authority. It passes judgment both on the man and his actions. ”

“ For it is a strain to know that one ought to do a thing, and yet feel unable to will it. And such an incapacity to will what we know we ought to do, if indulged in such a small affair as lying a-bed of a morning, is apt to appear in a very startling way when much graver matters are at stake. ”

“ Conflicts of Conscience. Conflicts may occur within the conscience itself. Conscience may not be harmonious. It may not be consistent in its judgments. The self is rarely developed equally completely on every side. So the conscience may often be unduly callous in one direction, and excessively sensitive in another. One man's conscience may be exceedingly punctilious in insisting on the exact letter of religious observance, though he may have no scruple whatever in engineering commercial enterprises of doubtful morality. ”

“ When I judge that in so far as in me lies I shall realise a certain end, the endeavour to realise that end becomes ipso facto an integral part of the conception of myself. Failure to realise it is regarded as my failure, my defeat. ”

“ Thus volition becomes strengthened in the face of obstacles by all the combative emotions. These are of varying kinds and of varying degrees of strength in different individuals; but all tendencies to hold out or to struggle against opposition, merely because it is opposition, are enlisted in the service of the will, inasmuch as the idea of the line of conduct willed is an integral part of the idea of self. ”

“ But if, in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name, and apperceives the case as that of 'being a drunkard, being a drunkard, being a drunkard,' his feet are planted on the road to salvation. He saves himself by thinking rightly." [2] Or, as Professor Stout puts it, "The thought of getting drunk attracts the man; but the thought of his getting drunk repels." [3] Thus, if we would deliberate well, we should always bring the possible courses of action into relation to the self as a whole. ”

“ It is true that conscience is rational. Conscience is the self making moral judgments. And judgment is always rational. Conscience is often pictured as a kind of judge. It carries on judicial investigation, it accuses, it bears witness, and it passes sentence. In all these judicial operations the rational aspect of conscience is prominent. Conscience is simply intelligence occupied with a certain kind of subject-matter. Conscientious reflection is distinguished from reflection in general, not as a special kind of mental activity ”

“ Thus it should be possible to do something to overcome the tendency of conscience to be slack in some directions, and excessively scrupulous in others. Here, as everywhere else, a harmonious moral life depends on the development of the self in accordance with a comprehensive and worthy moral ideal.
(2) Conscience must be enlightened. Ethics rests on the assumption that if all men had the same knowledge, their moral judgments would be in perfect agreement. Unless men have a certain stock of knowledge, reflection is either impossible or futile. ”

“ Here, indeed, perseverance is more difficult, because it is necessary to concentrate the attention on the uninteresting task. And the attention of the child, like the attention of most adults, is a very uncertain thing, which comes only by fits and starts. But the child can learn to form habits of concentrated attention. Such habits are formed only by perseverance in recalling the wandering mind to the subject in hand. Perseverance is entirely an affair of the will. ”

“ When intelligence deals with the relations of persons and moral actions, it is called conscience. Conscience is, indeed, simply consciousness dealing with moral life.
(2) But conscience also includes feeling. When conscience judges that such and such an action is wrong, we immediately feel that it is wrong. ”

“ Volition also differs from mere wish. The distinction cannot be stated better than it was by Aristotle in his Ethics. "Nor yet can will be the same as wish, though it is evidently near akin to it. There can be no willing of impossibilities, and, if a man were to say that he willed something impossible, he would be thought a fool. But we wish for impossibilities as well as possibilities. Again, we wish for things that could not possibly be performed by our agency, as, for instance, that a certain actor or a certain athlete should win the prize ”

“ In criticism of this view, we may urge (a) that feelings do not have the permanence that conscience possesses. Feelings are capricious and uncertain, varying from moment to moment. But conscience is constant and systematic, (b) Feelings are not reflective. Feelings give an immediate sense of value, but they cannot reflect on themselves or on anything else. But conscience is reflective. The fact that it often does not "prick" till after the action has been performed shows that its verdict is based on reflection. ”

“ We have already seen that the self sometimes seems divided against itself. A lower self may conflict with a higher. The business self may be discordant with the religious self. Now, in all cases of moral conflict between these different selves, the highest and best self is identified with will and conscience. This is the self which we like to regard as the true self. ”

“ Willed action is often "in the line of greatest resistance." We have to overcome obstacles to the attainment of some ideal end, and our inclination would lead us to turn aside from this difficult task and follow the line of least resistance. But we know that we ought to act in obedience to the ideal, however rough the path may be. Most willed action involves a struggle. ”

“ He knows he ought to be up. He knows that the morning is bright and warm. He knows he will be just as comfortable after his bath and breakfast as he is in bed. He may revolve all these thoughts in his mind. ”

“ The law of the land may command certain actions which an individual regards as immoral, or a man's country may be engaged in a war which he believes unjust. Is he, in the first case, to obey the State and disobey his own conscience by performing the act that is enjoined? ”

“ The hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual drunkard under temptation. He has made a resolve to reform, but is now solicited again by the bottle. His moral triumph or failure literally consists in finding the right name for the case. ”

“ It very soon tires of trying to do what is unpleasant or uninteresting. And it is not without pain that it learns the lesson of perseverance. Organised games are one of the most useful educational means of teaching the child to persist in what he is doing. The boy knows that he must "stick in" and not "slack it," if he wants to get into the school team. On the playing-field he realises that perseverance is a virtue, and he ought then to be more ready to be persuaded to cultivate this virtue in relation to his school work. ”

“ It is precisely because it is often so hard to will simple actions that it is so important to form good habits in accordance with which we shall act habitually without needing to will the action on every occasion. The man who forms the habit of rising at the same hour saves not only much time but much nervous strain. ”

“ Most people whose time is largely at their own disposal know how readily they relapse into a state of aboulia, or simple incapacity to will. A man lies in bed on a summer morning, simply because he cannot get himself to will to rise. ”

“ There is a saying of the Greek sage Pittacus, which deserves to be inscribed in letters of gold in every schoolroom and in every home: "It is hard to be good."
It is "hard to be good" because—to mention one reason—it is often difficult to will to do what we ought to do. ”

“ The conception of the self has become fixed where it was previously indeterminate. The realisation of one line of conative tendency is now definitely anticipated as part of our future life-history, so far at least as external conditions will allow of its execution. ”

“ The fixity of the will is also strengthened, often in a very high degree, by aversion to the state of irresolution. Suspense is in itself disagreeable; and when we have emerged from it by a voluntary decision, we shrink from lapsing into it once more. ”