CONSCIENCE
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CONSCIENCE
classical aiithors of paganism; no system was reached,
but each Father did what was characteristic. Tertul-
ban was a lawyer and spoke in legal terms: especially
his Montanism urged him to inquire which were the
mortal sins, and thus he started for future investiga-
tors a good line of inquiry. Clement of Alexandria
was allegoric and mystic: a combiner of Orientalism,
Hellenism, Judaism, and Christianity in their bearing
on the several virtues and vices. The apologists, in
defending the Christian character, dwelt on the marks
of ethical conduct. St. Justin attributed this excel-
lence to the Divine Logos, and thought that to Hmi,
through Moses, the pagan philosophers were indebted
(Apol., I, xliv). Similarly Origen accounted for pre-
Christian examples of Christian virtue. As a Roman
skilled in legal administration St. Ambrose was largely
guided by Latin versions of Greek ethics, as is very
well illustrated by his imitation in style of Cicero's
" De OfEciis", which he made the title of his own work.
He discusses honestum et utile (I, ix); decorum, or rd
irpiirov, as exhibited in Holy Scripture (x); various de-
grees of goodne.ss, mediocre and perfect, in connexion
with the text, "if thou wilt be perfect" (xi); the pas-
sions of hot youth (xvii). Subseciuent chapters dwell
on the various virtues, as fortitude in war and its allied
quality, courage in martyrdom (xl, xli). The second
book opens with a discussion of beatitude, and then re-
turns to the different virtues. It is the pupil of St.
Ambrose, St. Augustine, who is, perhaps, the most im-
portant of the Fathers in the development of the Chris-
tian doctrine of conscience, not so much on account of
his frequent discourses about moral subjects, as be-
cause of the Platonism which he drank in before his
conversion, and afterwards got rid of only by degrees.
The abiding result to the Scholastic system was that
many writers traced their ethics and theology more or
less to innate ideas, or innate dispositions, or Divine
illuminations, after the example of St. Augustine.
Even in St. Thomas, who was so distinctly an Aristote-
lean empiricist, some fancy that they detect occasional
remnants of Augustinianism on its Platonic side.
Before leaving the Fathers we may mention St. Basil as one who illustrates a theorizing attitude. He was sound enough in recognizing sin to be graver and less grave; yet in the stress of argument against some persons who seemed to admit only the worst offences against God to be real sins, he ventured, without ap- proving of Stoic doctrine, to point out a sort of equal- ity in all sin, so far as all sin is a disobedience to God (Hom. de Justitia Dei, v-viii). Later Abelard and re- cently Dr. Schell abused this suggestion. But it has had no influence in any way like that of St. Augustine's Platonism, of which a specimen may be seen in St. Bonaventure, when he is treating precisely of con- science, in a passage very useful as shedding light on a subsequent part of this article. Some habits, he says, are acquired, some innate as regards knowledge of sin- gulars and knowledge of universals. " Quum enim ad cognitionem duo concurrant necessario, videlicet pra»- sentia cognoscibilis et lumen quo mediante de illo jiuli- camus, habitus cognosciti%T sunt quodammodo nobis innati ratione luminis animo inditi; sunt etiam ac- quisiti ratione specie! ' ' — " For as two things necessarily concur for cognition, namely, the presence of some- thing cognoscible, and thelight by which we judge con- cerning it, cognoscitive habits are in a certain sense in- nate, by reason of the light wherewith the mind is en- doweil; and they are also acquired, 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 inn.ata quae statim Uunine in- tellectus agentis cognoscuntur per species a sensibus abstractas". — Principles are called innate when they are known at once by the light of the active intellect through the species abstracted from the senses.) Then comes the very noticeable and easily mis- understood addition a little later: "si quae sunt
cognoscibilia per sui essentiam, non per speciem,
respectu talium poterit dici conscientia esse hnbilus
simpliciter innatus, utpote respectu hujus iiuod est
Deum amare et timere; Deus enim non cognoscitur per
similitiulinem 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 serving God; for
God is not known by sense through an image; rather,
'the knowledge of God is implanted in us by nature',
as Augustine says " ( In Joan.", Tract, cvi, n. 4; "Con-
fess.", X, XX, xxix; "De Lib. Arbitr.", I, xiv, xxxi;
"De Mor. Eccl.", iii, iv; "De Trin.", XIIl, iii, vi;
"Joan. Dam. de Fide", I, i, iii). We must remember
that St. Bonaventure is not only a theologian but also
a mystic, supposing in man oculus carnis, ocidus rati-
onis and oculus contemplutionis (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 the existence of God as to devote his labour
to explaining that logical conviction is consistent with
faith in the same existciin- iCnTimi. in III Sent., dist.
x.xiv, art. 1, Q. iv). All tlnsi- matters are highly sig-
nificant for tho.se who take up any thorough e.xamina-
tion of the question as to what the Scholastics thought
about man having a conscience by his very nature as
a rational being. The point recurs frequently in Scho-
lastic literature, to which we must next turn.
(3) In Scholastic times. — It will help to make intelli- gible the subtle and variable theories which follow, if it be premised that the Scholastics are apt to puzzle readers by mi.xing up with their philosophy of reason a real or apparent apriorism, which is called Augustin- ianism, Platonism, or Mysticism, (a) As a rule, to which Durandus with some others was an exception, the Schoolmen regarded created causes as unable to is- sue in any ilefinite act unless applied or stimulated by God, the Prime Mover: whence came the Thomistic doctrine of pnrmotio physica even for the intellect and the will, and the simple concursus of the non-Thomists.
(b) Furthermore they supposed some powers to be potential and passive, that is, to need a creative deter- minant received into them as their complement: of which kind a prominent example was the intellectus possihilis informed by the species intelliyihilis, and an- other instance was in relation to conscience, the syn- teresis. (St. Thomas, De Verit., Q. xvi, art. 1, ad 1.3.)
(c) First principles or habits inherent in intellect and will were clearly traced by St. Thomas to an origin in experience and abstraction; but others spoke more ambiguously or even contradictorily; St. Thomas him- self, in isolated passages, might seem to afford material for the priorist to utilize in favour of innate forms. But the Thomistic explanation of appetitus innatus, as contrasted with cUcitus, saves the situation.
Abelard, in his "Ethics", or " Noscc Teipsum ", does not plunge us into these depths, and yet he taughtsuch an indwelling of the Holy tihost in virtuoiLs pagans as too unrestrictedly to make their virtues to be Chris- tian. He |ilaced morality so much in the inward act that he denied the mondity of the outward, anil sin ho placed not in the olijrctively disordered deed but in contem]5t for God, in which opinion he was imitated by Prof. Schell. Moreover he openeil a way to wrong opinions by calling free will "tlie free judgment about the will". In his errors, however, he was not so wholly astray as careless reading might lead some to infer. It was with Alexander of Ilalos that discussions which some will r(>gard as the tedious mituitia' of Scholastic speculation began. The origin lay in the introduction from St. Jerome (in Ezech., I, Bk. I, ch. 1) of the term synteresis or syndere.-iis. There the commentator, hav- ing treated three of the mystic animals in the Proph- ecy as symbolizing respectively three Platonic powers of the soul: t4 iwit)v)iijTiK6v (the appetitive), ri Sviuxdr
