[23] Evol. Creat., p. 159.
[24] Hib. Jour., July 1911.
[25] Some sentences in the above are borrowed from the writer's Ethics of St. Paul.
{68}
CHAPTER V
THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE
Passing from the physical and mental constituents of man, we turn to the more distinctly moral elements; and in this chapter we shall consider that aspect of the human consciousness to which mankind has given the name of 'conscience.'
No subject has presented greater difficulties to the moralist, and there are few which require more careful elucidation. From the earliest period of reflection the question how we came to have moral ideas has been a disputed one. At first it was thought that there existed in man a distinct innate faculty or moral sense which was capable of deciding categorically man's duty without reference to history or condition. But in modern times the theory of evolution has discredited the inviolable character of conscience, and sought rather to determine its nature and significance in the light of its origin and development. Only the barest outline of the subject can be attempted here, since our object is simply to show that however we may account for its presence, there is in man, as we know him, some power or function which bears witness to divine truth and fits him to respond to the revelation of Christ. It will be most convenient to consider the subject under three heads: I. the history of the Conception; II. the nature and origin of Conscience; and III. its present validity.
I. History of the Conception.—'The name conscience,' says a writer on the subject, 'appears somewhat late in {69} the history of the world: that for which it stands is as old as mankind.'[1]
1. Without pushing our inquiries back into the legendary lore of savage life, in which we find evidence of the idea in the social institutions and religious enactments of primitive races, it is among the Greeks that the word, if not the idea of conscience, first meets us. Perhaps the earliest trace of the notion is to be found in the mythological conception of the Furies, whose business it was to avenge crime—a conception which might be regarded as the reaction of man's own nature against the violation of better instincts, if not as the reflection or embodiment of what is popularly called conscience. It can scarcely be doubted that the Erinnyes of Aeschylus were deities of remorse, and possess psychological significance as symbols of the primitive action of conscience.[2] Though Sophocles is less of a theologian than Aeschylus, and problems of Ethics count less than the human interest of his story, the law of Nemesis does find in him dramatic expression, and the noble declaration put into the mouth of Antigone concerning the unwritten laws of God that 'know no change and are not of to-day nor yesterday, but must be obeyed in preference to the temporary commandments of men,'[3] is a protest on behalf of conscience against human oppression. And even in Euripides, regarded as an impious scoffer by some scholars,[4] there are not wanting, especially in the example of Alcestis, evidence of belief in that divine justice and moral order of which the virtues of self-devotion and sacrifice in the soul of man are the witness.