Moral conscience

“ The conscience discerns and affirms this reality of good and evil-desert.
Here is reached the psychological source of the great fact of responsibility in the world. It emerges into consciousness and into actual force in human life from this point in the disclosures and affirmations of the moral sense. Hence arises the unspeakably varied but ever persistent human necessity under which men are compelled to regard themselves and others as justly amenable to the law of moral consequences. Its application is seen in every sphere of life, personal, domestic, social, and national. ”

“ Shall ethics be founded on feeling, which to-day is and tomorrow is cast into the oven?
The traditional answer of the advocates of conscience, when these facts are urged against them, is well known. They say, various less dignified mental tendencies may at times be mistaken for conscience; but the moral sense is real and trustworthy notwithstanding all these mistakes. Shame, or love of praise, or sense of propriety may pass themselves off as conscience; but the genuine conscience, when you find it, is infallible. ”

“ This consideration, important as it is, cannot however be considered as sufficient. For this moral conscience, this certitude with which the moral conscience affirms the existence of an unavoidable duty, might also be an illusion determined in us by natural causes. ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ VI Let me add a word concerning the part played by the imagination in enforcing the logic of morality. An enlightened conscience, or a rational conviction of duty, will consist essentially in the viewing of life with a certain remove from its local incidents. In conduct, as in all matters where validity or truth is concerned, the critical consciousness must disengage itself and view the course of things in its due proportions, allowing one's dearest interests to lie where they lie among the rest. ”

“ What is right for me to do now, seeing that I am here with a certain character, and a certain moral sense as part of it, is just what I feel to be right. The individual conscience is, in the moment of volition, the only possible judge of what is right; there is no conflicting claim. But if we are deliberating about the future, we know that we can modify our conscience gradually by associating with people, reading certain books, and paying attention to certain ideas and feelings; and we may ask ourselves, ‘How shall we modify our conscience, if at all? ”

“ In the same way no one will wish to deny that the moral feeling, as the natural expression of the inner voice of conscience, constitutes in social life the fundamental condition and the surest foundation for all lofty and noble sentiments. ”

“ All the facts of our moral consciousness, therefore,—the knowledge of right and wrong, the judgments of conscience, the recognition of duty and responsibility, the feelings of reverence, remorse, and moral indignation,—all these could be traced, they thought, to an origin in experience, to an origin which in the last resort was sensuous, that is, due to the perceptions of the senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany or follow them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the question, 'Why should I be moral?' means, most naturally and usually, What inducements are there to me to do right?" The answer is that motives differ for different individuals. With some, outer social inducements, with others, the approbation and disapprobation of conscience are stronger. ”

“ The word "conscience," as it is more generally used, seems to emphasize the element of reflection in a greater degree than "moral sense." The explanation of the apparent independence of conscience is merely that, in the good man, the moral order is realized, and action from moral principle takes place spontaneously. ”

“ But even because conscience is an immediate perception of right and wrong, a moral instinct for good and evil, and, consequently, in form, wholly distinct from that function of reason which infers and deduces consequences, I am indisposed to give it such a name, and would rather regard it as a peculiar faculty of soul or heart, subsisting by itself, and intermediate between will and reason. ”

“ The history of the process by which, under the influence of social life, its wants, obligations, utilities, arrangements, and sanctions, the sense of a right due to ourselves was elaborated into the voice of conscience prescribing what is due to others, would be a valuable and interesting contribution to moral science. But though quite beyond our present limits it is, I think, possible to sketch in mere outline the stages through which conscience passed till it reached its full growth. ”

“ A third thing to be marked in this psychological analysis of the action of conscience, and revealing its nature, is the affirmation of right or wrong to particular acts or principles of conduct. In this the function of conscience passes from its fundamental idea into the form of an applicatory judgment. The ideas of right and obligation are applied to the actual affairs and activities of life. The quality of right or wrong is connected with particular actions, feelings or purposes, and these are affirmed to be right or wrong according as they have or have not such moral quality. ”

“ The thing discerned by the conscience is generically different from the things discerned by the sense-perception or consciousness. Through our senses we know the whole world of objective existences, events and their relations; through consciousness the states, acts and experiences of the subjective personal self are given. But the conscience does not furnish us with a knowledge of any of the substances, events or relations which constitute the world about us or the world within us, but solely of the moral quality of conduct and sentiment, as duty is developed in these relations. ”

“ It is, moreover, equally absurd to look upon moral values as ultimate and irreducible categories of good and evil, irrevocably codified by an omniscient Deity for the conduct of humanity for all time, and supposedly accessible to the intelligence of all who consult their conscience. ”

“ For now let us observe that the ethical sentiment and idea, properly so-called, are independent of the ideas and sentiments above described as derived from external authorities, and coercions, and approbations—religious, political, or social. The true moral consciousness which we name conscience does not refer to those extrinsic results of conduct which take the shape of praise or blame, reward or punishment, externally awarded ”

“ And, on the other hand, the attribution of our moral ideas, directly or indirectly, to the teaching of a Being immeasurably above us,—a theory which represents conscience as a ray shot downward from a sun, instead of a marsh-fire illumined under special conditions of social existence, and liable to blaze up, die down, or flit hither and thither as they may determine,—must inevitably elevate and sanctify the laws of morals to our apprehension. ”

“ And let me add, it is the favourite way of young and enthusiastic persons; the favourite way, likewise, of meditative and contemplative men, who dwell apart from mankind, and look at principles, which are the norm of action, more than at the immediate or ultimate effect of special measures.
The other way is by reflective moral action. Here we learn the moral laws by experiment; by observation, trial, experience, we find out what suits the conscience of the individual and the conscience of mankind. ”

“ In just the same proportion as we recognise the law of causality, we shall also recognise the moral law. Reason itself is compelled to arouse in us conscience,—theoretical consciousness awakens ethical consciousness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is called the question of the moral sense is really two: how the moral faculty is acquired, and how it is regulated. Why do we obey conscience or feel pain in disobeying it? And why does conscience prescribe one kind of action and condemn another kind? ”

“ 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; ”

“ But the motive power of conscience is derived from the moral system formed through this twofold relation to himself and to his fellow-men. To know good is not to love it; this knowledge is not innate in man; but as soon as his reason leads him to perceive it, his conscience impels him to love it ”

“ Thus it becomes plainly evident that besides the conscience by which the ethical quality and obligation are perceived, other powers by which conduct may be conformed to this obligation are requisite to fit beings for the responsibilities of moral agency. In other words, our moral nature is not only the conscience by which we approve and condemn, but also all the other endowments by which we originate or work out what is approvable or condemnable. Illustrations of this appear in our lives every day. Conscience does not love, yet love of what is good is a moral act or temper. ”

“ This basis of moral responsibility extends in kind, it not in degree, to all life. It necessitates a directing conscience, which shall guide all our intellectual and practical relations with every category of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For though, while in obeying our fallible conscience, we have thus failed to bring our whole outward action in the case into harmony with full duty, or have even done what to others about us or to God above us was wrong, we have maintained our own subjective personal moral integrity, in maintaining that which is the fundamental and essential element of all morality, the right intention and effort. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We pass from the consideration of the culture of character to that of conscience. This is the relation which the moral agent makes between himself as manifestation and himself as idea. It compares itself, in its past or future, with its nature, and judges itself accordingly as good or bad. This independence of the ethical judgment is the soul proper of Religious Culture.86 all morality, the negation of all self-deception and of all deception through another. ”

“ As we have seen, conscience is simply the self regarded as passing moral judgments, and conscience has absolute authority because it is the rational self. The free and rational self is, in the fullest sense, the author of its actions and its judgments. ”

“ Apart from the question of the ultimate sanction of moral conduct, there have always been two explanations of the mental act variously known as "ethical judgment," "moral faculty," "moral sense" or conscience. On the one side there have been those who considered that moral judgment was an emotion, an intuition, or instinctive recognition of right or wrong, which implied no rational or intellectual process beyond [Pg 10] that which is involved in registering or perceiving the fact. ”

“ But to illustrate by example: we could not, for instance, have the ideas of good and evil without their objective realities, nor of right and wrong, in any intelligible form, without the moral law to which they refer,--which law we call the Conscience; nor could we have the idea of a moral law without a moral lawgiver, and, if moral, then intelligent, and, if intelligent, then personal; in a word, we could not now have, as we know we have, the idea of conscience, without an objective, personal God. ”