KANT'S DOCTRINE OF CONSCIENCE.
The alleged Practical Reason with its Categorical Imperative, is manifestly very closely connected with Conscience, although essentially different from it in two respects. In the first place, the Categorical Imperative, as commanding, necessarily speaks before the act, whereas Conscience does not till afterwards. Before the act Conscience can at best only speak indirectly, that is, by means of reflection, which holds up to it the recollection of previous cases, in which similar acts after they were committed received its disapproval. It is on this that the etymology of the word Gewissen (Conscience) appears to me to rest, because only what has already taken place is gewiss[1] (certain). Undoubtedly, through external inducement and kindled emotion, or by reason of the internal discord of bad humour, impure, base thoughts, and evil desires rise up in all people, even in the best. But for these a man is not morally responsible, and need not load his conscience with them; since they only show what the genus homo, not what the individual, who thinks them, would be capable of doing. Other motives, if not simultaneously, yet almost immediately, come into his consciousness, and confronting the unworthy inclinations prevent them from ever being crystallised into deeds; thus causing them to resemble the out-voted minority of an acting committee. By deeds alone each person gains an empirical knowledge no less of himself than of others, just as it is deeds alone that burden the conscience. For, unlike thoughts, these are not problematic; on the contrary, they are certain (gewiss), they are unchangeable, and are not only thought, but known (gewusst). The Latin conscientia,[2] and the Greek συνείδησις[3] have the same sense. Conscience is thus the knowledge that a man has about what he has done.
The second point of difference between the alleged Categorical Imperative and Conscience is, that the latter always draws its material from experience; which the former cannot do, since it is purely a priori. Nevertheless, we may reasonably suppose that Kant's Doctrine of Conscience will throw some light on this new conception of an absolute Ought which he introduced. His theory is most completely set forth in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe zur Tugendlehre, § 13, and in the following criticism I shall assume that the few pages which contain it are lying before the reader.
The Kantian interpretation of Conscience makes an exceedingly imposing effect, before which one used to stand with reverential awe, and all the less confidence was felt in demurring to it, because there lay heavy on the mind the ever-present fear of having theoretical objections construed as practical, and, if the correctness of Kant's view were denied, of being regarded as devoid of conscience. I, however, cannot be led astray in this manner, since the question here is of theory, not of practice; and I am not concerned with the preaching of Morals, but with the exact investigation of the ultimate ethical basis.
We notice at once that Kant employs exclusively Latin legal terminology, which, however, would seem little adapted to reflect the most secret stirrings of the human heart. Yet this language, this judicial way of treating the subject, he retains from first to last, as though it were essential and proper to the matter. And so we find brought upon the stage of our inner self a complete Court of justice, with indictment, judge, plaintiff, defendant, and sentence;—nothing is wanting. Now if this tribunal, as portrayed by Kant, really existed in our breasts, it would be astonishing if a single person could be found to be, I do not say, so bad, but so stupid, as to act against his conscience. For such a supernatural assize, of an entirely special kind, set up in our consciousness, such a secret court—like another Fehmgericht[4]—held in the dark recesses of our inmost being, would inspire everybody with a terror and fear of the gods strong enough to really keep him from grasping at short transient advantages, in face of the dreadful threats of superhuman powers, speaking in tones so near and so clear. In real life, on the contrary, we find, that the efficiency of conscience is generally considered such a vanishing quantity that all peoples have bethought themselves of helping it out by means of positive religion, or even of entirely replacing it by the latter. Moreover, if Conscience were indeed of this peculiar nature, the Royal Society could never have thought of the question put for the present Prize Essay.
But if we look more closely at Kant's exposition, we shall find that its imposing effect is mainly produced by the fact that he attributes to the moral verdict passed on ourselves, as its peculiar and essential characteristic, a form which in fact is not so at all. This metaphorical bar of judgment is no more applicable to moral self-examination than it is to every other reflection as regards what we have done, and might have done otherwise, where no ethical question is involved. For it is not only true that the same procedure of indictment, defence, and sentence is occasionally assumed by that obviously spurious and artificial conscience which is based on mere superstition; as, for instance, when a Hindu reproaches himself with having been the murderer of a cow, or when a Jew remembers that he has smoked his pipe at home on the Sabbath; but even the self-questioning which springs from no ethical source, being indeed rather unmoral than moral, often appears in a shape of this sort, as the following case may exemplify. Suppose I, good-naturedly, but thoughtlessly, have made myself surety for a friend, and suppose there comes with evening the clear perception of the heavy responsibility I have taken on myself—a responsibility that may easily involve me in serious trouble, as the wise old saying, ἐγγύα παρά δ' ἃτα![5] predicts; then at once there rise up within me the Accuser and the Counsel for the defence, ready to confront each other. The latter endeavours to palliate my rashness in giving bail so hastily, by pointing out the stress of circumstance or of obligation, or, it may be, the simple straightforwardness of the transaction; perhaps he even seeks excuse by commending my kind heart. Last of all comes the Judge who inexorably passes the sentence: "A fool's piece of work!" and I am overwhelmed with confusion So much for this judicial form of which Kant is so fond; his other modes of expression are, for the most part, open to the same criticism. For instance, that which he attributes to conscience, at the beginning of the paragraph, as its peculiar property, applies equally to all other scruples of an entirely different sort. He says: "It (conscience) follows him like his shadow, try though he may to escape. By pleasures and distractions he may be stupefied and billed to sleep, but he cannot avoid occasionally waking up and coming to himself; and then he is immediately aware of the terrible voice," etc. Obviously, this may be just as well understood, word for word, of the secret consciousness of some person of private means, who feels that his expenses far exceed his income, and that thus his capital is being affected, and will gradually melt away.
We have seen that Kant represents the use of legal terms as essential to the subject, and that he keeps to them from beginning to end; let it now be noted how he employs the same style for the following finely devised sophism. He says: "That a person accused by his conscience should be identified with the judge is an absurd way of portraying a court of justice; for in that case the accuser would invariably lose." And he adds, by way of elucidating this statement, a very ambiguous and obscure note. His conclusion is that, if we would avoid falling into a contradiction, we must think of the judge (in the judicial conscience-drama that is enacted in our breasts) as different from us, in fact, as another person; nay more, as one that is an omniscient knower of hearts, whose hests are obligatory on all, and who is almighty for every purpose of executive authority.[6] He thus passes by a perfectly smooth path from conscience to superstition, making the latter a necessary consequence of the former; while he is secretly sure that he will be all the more willingly followed because the reader's earliest training will have certainly rendered him familiar with such ideas, if not have made them his second nature. Here, then, Kant finds an easy task,—a thing he ought rather to have despised; for he should have concerned himself not only with preaching, but also with practising truthfulness. I entirely reject the above quoted sentence, and all the conclusions consequent thereon, and I declare it to be nothing but a shuffling trick. It is not true that the accuser must always lose, when the accused is the same person as the judge; at least not in the court of judgment in our hearts. In the instance I gave of one man going surety for another, did the accuser lose? Or must we in this case also, if we wish to avoid a contradiction, really assume a personification after Kant's fashion, and be driven to view objectively as another person that voice whose deliverance would have been those terrible words: "A fool's piece of work!"? A sort of Mercury, forsooth, in living flesh? Or perhaps a prosopopoeia of the Μῆτις (cunning) recommended by Homer (Il. xxiii. 313 sqq.)?[7] But thus we should only be landed, as before, on the broad path of superstition, aye, and pagan superstition too.
It is in this passage that Kant indicates his Moral Theology, briefly indeed, yet not without all its vital points. The fact that he takes care, not to attribute to it any objective validity, but rather to present it merely as a form subjectively unavoidable, does not free him from the arbitrariness with which he constructs it, even though he only claims its necessity for human consciousness. His fabric rests, as we have seen, on a tissue of baseless assumptions.
So much, then, is certain. The entire imagery—that of a judicial drama—whereby Kant depicts conscience is wholly unessential and in no way peculiar to it; although he keeps this figure, as if it were proper to the subject, right through to the end, in order finally to deduce certain conclusions from it. As a matter of fact it is a sufficiently common form, which our thoughts easily take when we consider any circumstance of real life. It is due for the most part to the conflict of opposing motives which usually spring up, and which are successively weighed and tested by our reflecting reason. And no difference is made whether these motives are moral or egoistic in their nature, nor whether our deliberations are concerned with some action in the past, or in the future. Now if we strip from Kant's exposition its dress of legal metaphor, which is only an optional dramatic appendage, the surrounding nimbus with all its imposing effect immediately disappears as well, and there remains nothing but the fact that sometimes, when we think over our actions, we are seized with a certain self-dissatisfaction, which is marked by a special characteristic. It is with our conduct per se that we are discontented, not with its result, and this feeling does not, as in every other case in which we regret the stupidity of our behaviour, rest on egoistic grounds. For on these occasions the cause of our dissatisfaction is precisely because we have been too egoistic, because we have taken too much thought for ourselves, and not enough for our neighbour; or perhaps even because, without any resulting advantage, we have made the misery of others an object in itself. That we may be dissatisfied with ourselves, and saddened by reason of sufferings which we have inflicted, not undergone, is a plain fact and impossible to be denied. The connection of this with the only ethical basis that can stand an adequate test we shall examine further on. But Kant, like a clever special pleader, tried by magnifying and embellishing the original datum to make all that he possibly could of it, in order to prepare a very broad foundation for his Ethics and Moral Theology.
[1] Both words are, of course, derived from wissen = scire = εἱδέναι.—(Translator.)
[2] Cf. Horace's conscire sibi, pallescere culpa: Epist. I. 1, 61. To be conscious of having done wrong, to turn pale at the thought of the crime.
[3] Συνείδησις = consciousness (of right or wrong done).—(Translator.)
[4] The celebrated Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, which came into prominence about A.D. 1220. In A.D. 1335 the Archbishop of Cologne was appointed head of all the Fehme benches in Westphalia by the Emperor Charles IV. The reader will remember the description of the trial scene in Scott's Anne of Geierstein. Perhaps the Court of Star Chamber comes nearest to it in English History.—(Translator.)
[5] If you give a pledge, be sure that Ate (the goddess of mischief) is beside you; i.e., beware of giving pledges.—Thales ap. Plat. Charm. 165 A.
[6] Kant leads up to this position with great ingenuity, by having recourse to the theory of the two characters coexistent in man—the noumenal (or intelligible) and the empirical; the one being in time, the other, timeless; the one, fast bound by the law of causality, the other free.—(Translator.)
[7] Greek: Άλλ' ἄγε δὴ σύ, ϕίλος, μêτιν ἐμβάλλεο θυμῷ, κ.τ.λ.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE INTELLIGIBLE [1] AND EMPIRICAL CHARACTER. THEORY OF FREEDOM.
The attack I have made, in the cause of truth, on Kant's system of Morals, does not, like those of my predecessors, touch the surface only, but penetrates to its deepest roots. It seems, therefore, only just that, before I leave this part of my subject, I should bring to remembrance the brilliant and conspicuous service which he nevertheless rendered to ethical science. I allude to his doctrine of the co-existence of Freedom and Necessity. We find it first in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (pp. 533-554 of the first, and pp. 561-582 of the fifth, edition); but it is still more clearly expounded in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (fourth edition, pp. 169-179; R., pp. 224-231).
The strict and absolute necessity of the acts of Will, determined by motives as they arise, was first shown by Hobbes, then by Spinoza, and Hume, and also by Dietrich von Holbach in his Système de la Nature; and lastly by Priestley it was most completely and precisely demonstrated. This point, indeed, has been so clearly proved, and placed beyond all doubt, that it must be reckoned among the number of perfectly established truths, and only crass ignorance could continue to speak of a freedom, of a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae (a free and indifferent choice) in the individual acts of men. Nor did Kant, owing to the irrefutable reasoning of his predecessors, hesitate to consider the Will as fast bound in the chains of Necessity, the matter admitting, as he thought, of no further dispute or doubt. This is proved by all the passages in which he speaks of freedom only from the theoretical standpoint. Nevertheless, it is true that our actions are attended with a consciousness of independence and original initiative, which makes us recognise them as our own work, and every one with ineradicable certainty feels that he is the real author of his conduct, and morally responsible for it. But since responsibility implies the possibility of having acted otherwise, which possibility means freedom in some sort or manner; therefore in the consciousness of responsibility is indirectly involved also the consciousness of freedom. The key to resolve the contradiction, that thus arises out of the nature of the case, was at last found by Kant through the distinction he drew with profound acumen, between phaenomena and the Thing in itself (das Ding an sich). This distinction is the very core of his whole philosophy, and its greatest merit.
The individual, with his immutable, innate character strictly determined in all his modes of expression by the law of Causality, which, as acting through the medium of the intellect, is here called by the name of Motivation,—the individual so constituted is only the phaenomenon (Erscheinung). The Thing in itself which underlies this phaenomenon is outside of Time and Space, consequently free from all succession and plurality, one, and changeless. Its constitution in itself is the intelligible character, which is equally present in all the acts of the individual, and stamped on every one of them, like the impress of a signet on a thousand seals. The empirical character of the phaenomenon—the character which manifests itself in time, and in succession of acts—is thus determined by the intelligible character; and consequently, the individual, as phaenomenon, in all his modes of expression, which are called forth by motives, must show the invariableness of a natural law. Whence it results that all his actions are governed by strict necessity. Now it used to be commonly maintained that the character of a man may be transformed by moral admonitions and remonstrances appealing to reason; but when the distinction between the intelligible and empirical character had once been drawn, it followed that the unchangeableness, the inflexible rigidity of the empirical character, which thinking people had always observed, was explained and traced to a rational basis, and consequently accepted as an established fact by Philosophy. Thus the latter was so far harmonised with experience, and ceased to stand abashed, before popular wisdom, which long before had spoken the words of truth in the Spanish proverb: Lo que entra con el capillo, sale con la mortaja (that which comes in with the child's cap, goes out with the winding-sheet); or: Lo que en la leche se mama, en la mortaja se derrama (what is imbibed with the milk, is poured out again in the winding-sheet).
This doctrine of the co-existence of Freedom and Necessity I regard as the greatest of all the achievements of human sagacity. With the Transcendental Aesthetics it forms the two great diamonds in the crown of Kant's fame, which will never pass away. In his Treatise on Freedom, Schelling obviously served up the Kantian teaching in a paraphrase, which by reason of its lively colouring and graphic delineation, is for many people more comprehensible. The work would deserve praise if its author had had the honesty to say that he is drawing on Kant's wisdom, not on his own. As it is, a certain part of the philosophic public still credits him with the entire performance.
The theory itself, and the whole question regarding the nature of Freedom, can be better understood if we view them in connection with a general truth, which I think, is most concisely expressed by a formula frequently occurring in the scholastic writings: Operari sequitur esse.[2] In other words, everything in the world operates in accordance with what it is, in accordance with its inherent nature, in which, consequently, all its modes of expression are already contained potentially, while actually they are manifested when elicited by external causes; so that external causes are the means whereby the essential constitution of the thing is revealed. And the modes of expression so resulting form the empirical character; whereas its hidden, ultimate basis, which is inaccessible to experience, is the intelligible character, that is, the real nature per se of the particular thing in question. Man forms no exception to the rest of nature; he too has a changeless character, which, however, is strictly individual and different in each case. This character is of course empirical as far as we can grasp it, and therefore only phaenomenal; while the intelligible character is whatever may be the real nature in itself of the person. His actions one and all, being, as regards their external constitution, determined by motives, can never be shaped otherwise than in accordance with the unchangeable individual character. As a man is, so he his bound to act. Hence for a given person in every single case, there is absolutely only one way of acting possible: Operari sequitur esse[3] Freedom belongs only to the intelligible character, not to the empirical. The operari (conduct) of a given individual is necessarily determined externally by motives, internally by his character; therefore everything that he does necessarily takes place. But in his esse (i.e., in what he is), there, we find Freedom. He might have been something different; and guilt or merit attaches to that which he is. All that he does follows from what he is, as a mere corollary. Through Kant's doctrine we are freed from the primary error of connecting Necessity with esse (what one is), and Freedom with operari (what one does); we become aware that this is a misplacement of terms, and that exactly the inverse arrangement is the true one. Hence it is clear that the moral responsibility of a man, while it, first of all, and obviously, of course, touches what he does, yet at bottom touches what he is; because, what he is being the original datum, his conduct, as motives arise, could never take any other course than that which it actually does take. But, however strict be the necessity, whereby, in the individual, acts are elicited by motives, it yet never occurs to anybody—not even to him who is convinced of this necessity—to exonerate himself on that account, and cast the blame on the motives; for he knows well enough that, objectively considered, any given circumstance, and its causes, perfectly admitted quite a different, indeed, a directly opposite course of action; nay, that such a course would actually have taken place, if only he had been a different person. That he is precisely such a one as his conduct proclaims him to be, and no other—this it is for which he feels himself responsible; in his esse (what he is) lies the vulnerable place, where the sting of conscience penetrates. For Conscience is nothing but acquaintance with one's own self—an acquaintance that arises out of one's actual mode of conduct, and which becomes ever more intimate. So that it is the esse (what one is) which in reality is accused by conscience, while the operari (what one does) supplies the incriminating evidence. Since we are only conscious of Freedom through the sense of responsibility; therefore where the latter lies the former must also be; in the esse (in one's being). It is the operari (what one does) that is subject to necessity. But we can only get to know ourselves, as well as others empirically; we have no a priori knowledge of our character. Certainly our natural tendency is to cherish a very high opinion of it, because the maxim: Quisque praesumitur bonus, donec probetur contrarium (every one is presumed to be good, until the contrary is proved), is perhaps even more true of the inner court of justice than of the world's tribunals.
NOTE.
He who is capable of recognising the essential part of a thought, though clothed in a dress very different from what he is familiar with, will see, as I do, that this Kantian doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character is a piece of insight already possessed by Plato. The difference is, that with Kant it is sublimated to an abstract clearness; with Plato it is treated mythically, and connected with metempsychosis, because, as he did not perceive the ideality of Time, he could only represent it under a temporal form. The identity of the one doctrine with the other becomes exceedingly plain, if we read the explanation and illustration of the Platonic myth, which Porphyrius has given with such clear exactitude, that its agreement with the abstract language of Kant comes out unmistakably. In the second book of his Eclogues, chap. 8, §§ 37-40,[4] Stobaeus has preserved for us in extenso that part of one of Porphyrius' lost writings which specially comments on the myth in question, as Plato gives it in the second half of the tenth book of the Republic.[5] The whole section is eminently worth reading. As a specimen I shall quote the short § 39, in the hope of inducing any one who cares for these things to study Stobaeus for himself. It will then immediately become apparent that this Platonic myth is nothing less than an allegory of the profound truth which Kant stated in its abstract purity, as the doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character, and consequently that the latter had been reached, in its essentials, by Plato thousands of years ago. Indeed, this view seems to go back much further still, for Porphyrins is of opinion that Plato took it from the Egyptians. Certainly we already find the same theory in the Brahmanical doctrine of metempsychosis, and it is from this Indian source that the Egyptian priests, in all probability, derived their wisdom. § 39 is as follows:—
Τὸ γὰρ ὅλον βούλημα τοιοῡτ' ἔοικεν εἶναι τὸ τοῡ Πλάτωνος ἔχειν μὲν τὸ αὐτεξουσιον τὰς ψυχὰς, πρὶν εἰς σώματα καὶ βίους διαϕέρους ἐμπεσεῖν, εἰς τὸ ἢ τοῡτoν τὸν βίον ἕλεσθαι, ἢ ἄλλον, ὅν, μετὰ ποιᾱς ζωῆς καὶ σώματος οἰκείον τῇ ζωῇ, κτέλεσειν μέλλει (καὶ γὰρ λέοντος βίον ἐπ' αὐτῇ εἶνai ἔλεσθαι, καὶ ἀνδρὸς). Kakeῑνο μέντοι τὸ αὐτeξoύσιον, ἅμα τῇ πρός τινα τῶν τοιούτων βίων πτώσει, ἐμπεπόδισται. Κατελθοῡσαι γὰρ εἰς τὰ σώματα, καὶ ἀντὶ ψυχῶν aπολυτῶν γεγονῑυαι ψυχαὶ ζώων, τὸ αὐτεξούσιον ϕέρουσιν οἰκείον τῇ τοῡ ζώον κατασκευῇ, καὶ ἐϕ' ὧν μὲν εἶνai πολύνουν καὶ πολυκίνητον, ὡς ἐπ' ἀνθρώπον, ἐϕ' ὡν δὲ λυγοκίνηττον καὶ μονότροπον, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλον σχεδὸν πάντων ζώων. Ήρτῆσθαι δὲ τὸ αὐτeξoύσιον τοῡτo ἀπὸ τῆς κατασκετῆς, κινούμενον μὲν ἐξ αὐτοῡ, ϕερόμενον δὲ κατὰ τὰς ἐκ τῆς κατασκευῇς γυγνομένας προθυμίας.[6]
[1] V. Note on "intelligible" in Chapter I. of this Part.—(Translator)
[2] I.e., what is done is a consequence of that which is.
[3] I.e., his acts are a consequence of what he is.
[4] V. Joannes Stobaeus. Eclogae Physicae et Ethicae, edit. Curtius Wachsmuth et Otto Hense; Weidmann, Berlin, 1884. Vol. II., pp. 163-168.—(Translator.)
[5] V. Plat., Rep., edit. Stallbaum, 614 sqq. It is the ἀπόλoγos Ήρὸς τοῡ Άρμενίον.—(translator.)
[6] To sum up. What Plato meant seems to be this. Souls (he said) have free power, before passing into bodies and different modes of being, to choose this or that form of life, which they will pass through in a certain kind of existence, and in a body adapted thereto. (For a soul may choose a lion's, equally with a man's, mode of being.) But this free power of choice is removed simultaneously with entrance into one or other of such forms of life. For when once they have descended into bodies, and instead of unfettered souls have become the souls of living things, then they take that measure of free power which belongs in each case to the organism of the living thing. In some forms this power is very intelligent and full of movement, as in man; in some it has but little energy, and is of a simple nature, as in almost all other creatures. Moreover, this free power depends on the organism in such a way that while its capability of action is caused by itself alone, its impulses are determined by the desires which have their origin in the organism.—(Translator.)