CONSCIENCE
273
CONSCIENCE
Ko'vcs in the pursuit with a keen outlook for the chances
of error. Really unavoidable mistakes will not count
against us; but many errors are remotely, when not
proximately, preventable. From all our blunders we
should learn a lesson. The diligent examiner and cor-
rector of his own conscience has it in his power, by long
diligence to reach a great delicacy and responsiveness
to the call of duty 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 pro-
vision has to be made in an ethical theory of probabili-
ties which will be explained inthearticlePROB.*.BiLiSM.
Suffice it to say here tliat the theory leaves intact the
old rule that a man in so acting must judge that he cer-
tainly is allowed thus to act, even though sometimes it
might be more commendable to do otherwise. In in-
ferring something to be permissible, the extremes of
scrupulosity and of laxity have to be avoidetl.
(.3) The approvals ami reprorah of conscience. — The office of conscience is sometimes treated under too nar- row a conception. Some writers, after the manner of Socrates when he spoke of his dannon as rather a re- strainer than a pronioterof action, assign to conscience the office of forbidding, as others assign to law and gov- ernment the negative duty of -checking invasion upon individual liberty. Shaftesburj' (Inquiry II, 2, 1) re- gards conscience as the consciousness of wrongdoing, not of rightdoing. Carlyle in his " Essay on Charac- teristics asserts that we should have no sense of hav- ing a conscience but for the fact that we have sinnetl; with which view we may compare Green's idea about a reasoned system of ethics (Proleg., Bk. IV, ch. ii, sect. 311) that its use is negative "to provide a safegnartl against the pretext which in a speculative age some in- adequate and misapplied theories may afford our self- ishness rather than in the way of pointing out duties previously ignored". Others say that an ethics of conscience should no more be hortatory than art should be didactic. Mackenzie (Ethics, 3rd ed., Bk. Ill, ch. i, sect. 14) prefers to say simply that "conscience is a feeling of pain accompanying and resulting from non- conformity to principle". The suggestion which, by way of contrarj', these remarks offer is that we should use conscience largely as an approving and an instiga- ting and an inspiring agency to advance us in the right way. We should not in morals copy the physicists, who deny all attractive force and limit force to vis a tergo, a push from behind. Nor must we think that the positive side of conscience is exhausted in urging obligations: it may go on in spite of Kant, beyond duty 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 simply obliged to do so, though a less Ufiierous nature is not bound, and may take advan- tage — if it be an advantage — of its own inferiority. .Ncit such was the way in which Christ put the case: He s;iid hypothetically, " if thou wilt be perfect", and His fnllower St. Peter said to .\nani;is " \Vas not [thy land] lliiue own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine iiwn power? . . . Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God." (Acts, v, 4.) We have, then, a sphere of duty 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 hiscon- scicnci', but that is true only of the priggi.sh manner, not of the thJTig itself: for a sound mind may very well seek the joy which comes of a faithful, generous heart, andniakcil an elTort of a conscience that outstrips iluty to ain\ at higher perfection, not under the false persua IV.— 18
sion that only after duty has been fulfilled does merit
begin, but under the true conviction that duty is meri-
torious, and that so also is goodness in excess of duty.
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 of God is carefully cultivated.
Aristotle. Efh. Ni'c, VI. 5; Petkr Lombard, II Sent., dist. xx.xix, Q. iii; Alexander of Hales, Summa, Ft. H, Q. Ixxi; St. Bonaven-tuhe. In Lib. Stmt., loc. eit.; Albertus Magnus, SumTjui TheoL, Ft. II. Q. xcix. memb. 2, 3; Idem. Summa de Crcal., Ft. II. Q. Ixix. a. 1; St. Thomas. .Summa. I, Q. Ixxix, a.!. 12. 13; I-II. Q. xix. aa. 5. 6; Idem. Dc \ml.. Q. .xvi; Lehre
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