Examination of conscience

“ Or, comment se représente-t-on cette conscience dont nous sommes tous si portés à admettre l’existence? Impossible de la définir, nous dit-on, mais nous en avons tous une intuition immédiate: tout d’abord la conscience a conscience d’elle-même. Demandez à la première personne que vous rencontrerez, homme ou femme, psychologue ou ignorant, et elle vous répondra qu’elle se sent penser, jouir, souffrir, vouloir, tout comme elle se sent respirer. ”

“ Both the intellectual and emotional action of the soul are, therefore, included in what is named the conscience—the perceptive action, here as everywhere else, being primary and conditional for the emotional. If there were no ethical distinction perceived, none would be felt. The conscience, taken in its totality, thus includes both sides of the human psychology, the intellect and the sensibility, and it addresses its behests of duty to the will in its own peculiar way of moral law for conduct. ”

“ The conscience, in its essential perceptions and judgments, as appears from the analysis already given, is part of the rational intelligence. It designates the power and function of the intelligent ego, or personal self, for discernment in the sphere of right and duty—for insight into the reality of ethical law and obligation which belong to good conduct among rational, self-directing beings. ”

“ But as without a Thou there can be no You, so without a You no They, These, or Those; and as all these conjointly form the materials and subjects of consciousness and the conditions of experience, it is evident that conscience is the root of all consciousness—à fortiori, the precondition of all experience—and that the conscience cannot have been in its first revelation deduced from experience. ”

“ Further, while thus the summit point in the rational intelligence, the conscience employs for its perceptions and judgments the data of all the other functions of the mind. Its discernments are made in the light of all the truth which in any way illuminates the understanding. This explains why and how the conscience is educable. It is dependent on all the other intellectual powers for a knowledge of the relations105 of life which develop duties and in view of which every duty is to be determined and judged. ”

“ Of these I have in my former Lectures analyzed and described the conscience as the moral instinct for right and wrong, when I named it the reason applied to the will, or, rather, as I preferred to consider it, as a peculiar and independent faculty, intermediate between reason and will, and being an immediate feeling and judgment as to what is good and evil in human desires and actions. Now, just as conscience is a mean between reason and will, so is memory intermediate between reason and understanding. ”

“ This does not mean that conscience over-rules the understanding, or that the will can violate nature; but that conscience reveals another world, deeper and more real than nature, which is the proper sphere for the exercise of the will. ”

“ The light of conscience will be clear and pure, or dim and clouded, according to the completeness of our moral environment, training, and insight. But clear or dim, high or low, sensitive or dull, the light of conscience is the only light we have to guide us in the path of virtue. In hours of leisure and study it is our privilege to inform and clarify this consciousness of the ideal. ”

“ What is the value of conscience?
It would seem, at first glance, as if the development of reason should make conscience unnecessary. When we are able to discern the consequences of our acts, formulate and weigh our motives and aims, what need of these vague pre-rational promptings and inhibitions? Why not train men to supplant a blind sense of duty by a conscious insight, a rational valuation of ends and means? Is not reason, as it has been recently called, "the ultimate conscience"? ”

“ Starting from the universal phenomenon of moral distinctions in life, it determines the conscience psychologically, as a rationally intuitive power discerning the moral distinction and the reality and authority of moral law. ”

“ Thus, consciousness testifies that one is considering the performance of a certain act, conscience judges the morality, and permits or forbids; or consciousness testifies that a certain thing was done or not done in the past, conscience declares the morality—condemning, excusing, or approving what took place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And in this manner we explain to ourselves why the mysterious and inspired voice of conscience has at all times admonished man to worship Truth with that same intense earnestness, with those same scruples, with that identical personal energy, which we devote to every phase of our moral mission. ”

“ The fact is, that it belongs to all these departments—the intellectual, emotional, and volitional—and ought to be regarded not as a single faculty distinct from the particular decisions, motives, and acts of man, not as an activity foreign to the ego, but as the expression of the whole personality. The question of the origin of conscience, though closely connected with its nature, is for ethics only of secondary importance. ”

“ It is still the mandate of conscience. But it is the mandate of a conscience whose search-light has been taken possession of by the aesthetic sense and has been fed by imagination, instinct and intuition. ”

“ In English philosophical language we commonly denominate this self-realisation consciousness, a word of precisely the same etymological origin as conscience. If, in the next place, the reason is occupied, not with the reflex action of self-contemplation, but with moral action or the discernment of right from wrong, then it is called, and is, no longer consciousness, but conscience. Putting it technically, consciousness is a psychological expression, while conscience is ethical. ”

“ He took up the written sheet on which he had begun a dissertation as to what conscience is, as exerting a choice between good and evil. He had written: “Understanding governs what we purpose; consciousness governs what our understanding resolves upon. Hence, if our understanding choose the good, consciousness is satisfied.” ”

“ Here conscience acts spontaneously and anticipates experience, acts in advance of history, and spontaneously projects an ideal which is derived from the moral instinct of our nature. This is the transcendent way of learning the moral law. ”

“ Hence, whatever science has to tell us about conscience will be enthusiastically acclaimed by us as true equally with what we learn from the masters of the higher experience, the philosophers who break unto us the bread of life. ”

“ In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to the will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn, carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That is to say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so far as it knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make trustworthy judgments on new material submitted to it. ”

“ Thus they speak of a "common consciousness" which is the arbiter of the morals and faiths of men, a consciousness which is subject to evolutionary progress, and yet owes its existence to Divine revelation. ”

“ He therefore considers conscience as an original faculty of our nature, which decides clearly, authoritatively, and instantaneously, on every object that falls within its province. “As we rely,” says he, “upon the clear and distinct testimony of our eyes, concerning the colours and figures of the bodies about us, we have the same reason to rely, with security, upon the clear and unbiassed testimony of our conscience, with regard to what we ought and ought not to do.” ”

“ But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. We can tell that the judgment of So-and-So's conscience has a past history in his instincts, his original sympathies or antipathies, his experience or want of experience. We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; ”

“ For it operates in its most intense fashion, and with results most blessed or most disastrous, in the inner life. The great example that I would adduce is conscience. Use it, obey it, listen for its voice, never thwart it, and it grows and grows and grows, and becomes more and more sensitive, more and more educated, more and more sovereign in its decisions. ”

“ My conscience, your conscience, is like the standard measures which we at present possess, which by their very names—foot, handbreadth, nail, and the like, tell us that they were originally but the length of one man's limb. And so your measure of right and wrong, and another man's measure, though they may substantially correspond, yet differ according to your differences of education, character, and a thousand other things. So that the individual man's standard needs to be rectified. ”

“ This we mean when we say, man is a conscious being: he hath a consciousness or inward perception both of things present and past relating to himself, of his own tempers and outward behaviour. But what we usually term conscience, implies, somewhat more than this. It is not barely, the knowledge of our present, or the remembrance of our preceding life. To remember, to bear witness either of past or present things, is only one, and the least office of conscience. ”

“ But the conscience, which consists in an inappellable bearing-witness to the truth and reality of our reason, may legitimately be construed with the term reason, so far as the conscience is prescriptive; while as approving or condemning, it is the consciousness of the subordination or insubordination, the harmony or discord, of the personal will of man to and with the representative of the will of God. ”

“ Hence I have always said that it is wrong to refuse to recognise the peculiar character of these facts of consciousness that dominate our whole higher life, and to yield to the personal craving to bring these facts of consciousness into accord with an independent soul, a spiritual force, and let the individual formulate his religious feeling according to his conscience and disposition. ”

“ These duties are present to conscience, which itself arises from a doubling of consciousness. “We have the empirical person with his experience of the past, and we have the ideal person—that is to say, that which we wish to be,” [12] our ideal character. ”

“ If we desire financial prosperity, or physical blessings, or mental quickness, or spiritual peace, we will find in the teachings of God's Word how to obtain them.
God also guides us by the exercise of our consciences, and therefore it is always important that you and I should do what conscience tells us to be right. First of all we should study God's Word, in order that we may have an enlightened conscience, and then we should always follow conscience. ”

“ It is, indeed, possible that some of our immediate intuitions are true; but since what we intuit, what conscience tells us, is that certain actions will always produce the greatest sum of good possible under the circumstances, it is plain that reasons can be given, which will shew the deliverances of conscience to be true or false. ”

“ The inner voice of conscience also has often, and indeed from the very earliest times, been represented as a revelation, though of a different kind; and the moral feeling and its peculiar law have been supposed to be frequently opposed to, or at least wholly independent of, nature and the natural law. ”

“ To perceive the force of this argument, it must be remembered, That, by conscience, is only meant a man’s judgement concerning the quality of his own actions; which judgement, however come at, whether by use, or institution, by reason, or instinct, equally supposes some Law, or Rule of conduct, by which the nature of each action is tried, and by which its worth is estimated. ”

“ In other words, conscience is social in its origin, developing differently in different people according to their teaching, intelligence, will, ego-feeling, instincts, etc. From the standpoint of character analysis there are many types of people in regard to conscience development. ”

“ Yes, I reply, follow conscience; but see that it be a right and well-informed conscience, forming its judgments, not from impulse, passion, prejudice, the bias of habit, or of unreflecting custom, but from the clearest light of reason, and especially of the divine word. We are responsible for the judgments we form in morals, as much as for any class of our judgments; responsible, in other words, for the sort of conscience we have. ”

“ Thus it has been asserted that conscience is an original faculty of illumination which (if it has not been dimmed by indulgence in sin) shines upon moral truths and objects and reveals them without effort for precisely what they are. ”

“ That phenomenon, called conscience, which seemed at first sight the most likely to resist analysis by way of evolution, proves upon experiment to yield most readily to it.
As usual in questions of this description, philosophy has been made the slave, the victim, and finally the accomplice of language. The word conscience has come to suggest a kind of special faculty, not exactly thought and not exactly feeling, which presides over a specific department of man's being, namely, his moral conduct. ”

“ The Mystic Sense has an inner ear. Through it conscience delivers its message by means of which we come to know and understand the meaning of ought and ought not. Ready response to conscience is to be coveted above all things, especially where conscience has been trained and illumined. A friend once wrote me, a few days before his death, that he had come to see that what pretended to be education [83] was no education at all unless it included the development of conscience. But mere knowledge of right and wrong, ought and ought not, does not impart goodness. ”