MORAL SCIENCE, OR ETHICS.
The science of duty, often called moral as relating to customs or habits of thought and action, discusses human obligations, or inquires what responsible voluntary agents ought to do, and why. Man has a moral nature; is so constituted, and placed in such relations that he feels certain things to be right for him, and others wrong; he says: I ought to do this, and that I ought not. These words, or their equivalents, expressive of obligation, can be traced in all languages of which we have any knowledge, and they voice the common sentiment of the race. Men differ widely in their intelligence, and consequently in their ability to discriminate with respect to acts or states that are purely intellectual. Their metaphysics may be cloudy and confused, so that their judgments on such matters will have neither agreement nor authority. But the moral sense discovers moral qualities more clearly. Its decisions are prompt, and their authority is acknowledged. Speculative questions on the subject are not all answered with the same agreement. If it is asked why a thing is right, different persons may answer differently. One says because it is useful; another because it is commanded by a higher authority; and another because it accords with the fitness of things. These are questions for the intellect and not for the moral sense. Its province is simply to decide whether the act or state is right or not, and there it stops. Whether the basis of the rectitude approved is in some quality of the act itself, in an antecedent, or a consequent, may be properly asked, and reasons assigned for the answers given. But such questions are speculative, and the answers do not have, even when the best are given, the force of a moral conviction. In saying a thing is right because it is right, we affirm our conviction of the fact, but tacitly confess we may not know all the reasons why. How the fact is known is sufficiently explained by a reference to consciousness. We are so constituted that when moral qualities, in ourselves or others, are fairly presented and understood, there arise feelings of approval or condemnation, corresponding to that which excites them. Of such convictions and emotions we are at once conscious, and can have no more certain knowledge of anything than of what is thus felt. Connecting them with their exciting cause, it, too, is known, not by any outward or sense perception, yet not less certainly by an inward moral sense, whose decisions are promptly given, and with authority. There are frequent occasions for men to distinguish between what is right and what is merely lawful. A villain, destitute of moral rectitude, who for his own pleasure, or gain, robs society of its brightest jewels, spreading ruin and desolation through the community, may violate no statute, and escape legal condemnation; but, though having no fear of the law or of the courts, he is not less certainly a guilty man.
Conscience, as a faculty of the soul, differs but little from consciousness. Both words are from the same root, and neither, in its primary, etymological meaning, implies anything as to moral character. Consciousness is self-knowledge, the mind’s recognition of its own state as it is; and that a man has a conscience, or capacity for passing moral judgment on himself, is a condition that makes character of any kind possible. Each word, however, has now an additional meaning, sanctioned by general usage. The former generally implies emotions of approval or disapproval, and the latter that there is in the mind a standard of action, and a clear discrimination between right and wrong, with an immediate feeling of responsibility, or obligatory emotions.
Though thus richly endowed with intellect, sensibilities, and will, by nature capable of the highest mental activities, the structure of the soul would be strangely incomplete if the religious element were wanting. But it is not wanting. Man is a religious animal, and ever prone to worship. He has capacities that are not filled, longings unsatisfied, and must go out of himself for help and rest. Of all the sciences that concern him most, no other is half so important as the science of God, an infinite, all-wise, ever-present, personal God; our Creator, Redeemer, Benefactor. This science is transcendent, and confirmed by indubitable evidence. It satisfies and saves. “This is eternal life, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent.”