Peabody, Moral Philos., 41-60—“Conscience not a source, but a means, of knowledge. Analogous to consciousness. A judicial faculty. Judges according to the law before it. Verdict (verum dictum) always relatively right, although, by the absolute standard of right, it may be wrong. Like all perceptive faculties, educated by use (not by increase of knowledge only, for man may act worse, the more knowledge he has). For absolutely right decisions, conscience is dependent upon knowledge. To recognize conscience as legislator (as well as judge), is to fail to recognize any objective standard of right.” The Two Consciences, 46, 47—“Conscience the Law, and Conscience the Witness. The latter is the true and proper Conscience.”
H. B. Smith, System of Christ. Theology, 178-191—“The unity of conscience is not in its being one faculty or in its performing one function, but in its having one object, its relation to one idea, viz., right.... The term ‘conscience’ no more designates a special faculty than the term ‘religion’ does (or than the ‘æsthetic sense’).... The existence of conscience proves a moral law above us; it leads logically to a Moral Governor; ... it implies an essential distinction between right and wrong, an immutable morality; ... yet needs to be enlightened; ... men may be conscientious in iniquity; ... conscience is not righteousness; ... this may only show the greatness of the depravity, having conscience, and yet ever disobeying it.”
On the New Testament passages with regard to conscience, see Hofmann, Lehre von dem Gewissen, 30-38; Kähler, Das Gewissen, 225-293. For the view that conscience is primarily the cognitive or intuitional power of the soul, see Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 77; Alexander, Moral Science, 20; McCosh, Div. Govt., 297-312; Talbot, Ethical [pg 504]Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July, 1877:257-274; Park, Discourses, 260-296; Whewell, Elements of Morality, 1:259-266. On the whole subject of conscience, see Mansel, Metaphysics, 158-170; Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 45—“The discovery of duty is as distinctly relative to an objective Righteousness as the perception of form to an external space”; also Types, 2:27-30—“We first judge ourselves; then others”; 53, 54, 74, 103—“Subjective morals are as absurd as subjective mathematics.” The best brief treatment of the whole subject is that of E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 26-78. See also Wayland, Moral Science, 49; Harless, Christian Ethics, 45, 60; H. N. Day, Science of Ethics, 17; Janet, Theory of Morals, 264, 348; Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 62; cf. Schwegler, Hist. Philosophy, 233; Haven, Mor. Philos., 41; Fairchild, Mor. Philos., 75; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 71; Passavant, Das Gewissen; Wm. Schmid, Das Gewissen.
2. Will.
A. Will defined.—Will is the soul's power to choose between motives and to direct its subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen,—in other words, the soul's power to choose both an end and the means to attain it. The choice of an ultimate end we call immanent preference; the choice of means we call executive volition.
In this definition we part company with Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, in Works, vol. 2. He regards the will as the soul's power to act according to motive, i. e., to act out its nature, but he denies the soul's power to choose between motives, i. e., to initiate a course of action contrary to the motive which has been previously dominant. Hence he is unable to explain how a holy being, like Satan or Adam, could ever fall. If man has no power to change motives, to break with the past, to begin a new course of action, he has no more freedom than the brute. The younger Edwards (Works, 1:483) shows what his father's doctrine of the will implies, when he says: “Beasts therefore, according to the measure of their intelligence, are as free as men. Intelligence, and not liberty, is the only thing wanting to constitute them moral agents.” Yet Jonathan Edwards, determinist as he was, in his sermon on Pressing into the Kingdom of God (Works, 4:381), urges the use of means, and appeals to the sinner as if he had the power of choosing between the motives of self and of God. He was unconsciously making a powerful appeal to the will, and the human will responded in prolonged and mighty efforts; see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 109.
For references, and additional statements with regard to the will and its freedom, see chapter on Decrees, pages 361, 362, and article by A. H. Strong, in Baptist Review, 1883:219-242, and reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 114-128. In the remarks upon the Decrees, we have intimated our rejection of the Arminian liberty of indifference, or the doctrine that the will can act without motive. See this doctrine advocated in Peabody, Moral Philosophy, 1-9. But we also reject the theory of determinism propounded by Jonathan Edwards (Freedom of the Will, in Works, vol. 2), which, as we have before remarked, identifies sensibility with the will, regards affections as the efficient causes of volitions, and speaks of the connection between motive and action as a necessary one. Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, and The Will, 407—“Edwards gives to the controlling cause of volition in the past the name of motive. He treats the inclination as a motive, but he also makes inclination synonymous with choice and will, which would make will to be only the soul willing—and therefore the cause of its own act.” For objections to the Arminian theory, see H. B. Smith, Review of Whedon, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399; McCosh, Divine Government, 263-318, esp. 312; E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 109-137; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:115-147.
James, Psychology, 1:139—“Consciousness is primarily a selecting agency.” 2:393—“Man possesses all the instincts of animals, and a great many more besides. Reason, per se, can inhibit no impulses; the only thing that can neutralize an impulse is an impulse the other way. Reason may however make an inference which will excite the imagination to let loose the impulse the other way.” 549—“Ideal or moral action is action in the line of the greatest resistance.” 562—“Effort of attention is the essential phenomenon of will.” 567—“The terminus of the psychological process is volition; the point to which the will is directly applied is always an idea.” 568—“Though attention is the first thing in volition, express consent to the reality of what is attended to is an additional and distinct phenomenon. We say not only: It is a reality; [pg 505]but we also say: ‘Let it be a reality.’ ” 571—“Are the duration and intensity of this effort fixed functions of the object, or are they not? We answer, No, and so we maintain freedom of the will.” 584—“The soul presents nothing, creates nothing, is at the mercy of material forces for all possibilities, and, by reinforcing one and checking others, it figures not as an epiphenomenon, but as something from which the play gets moral support.” Alexander, Theories of the Will, 201-214, finds in Reid's Active Powers of the Human Mind the most adequate empirical defense of indeterminism.
B. Will and other faculties.—(a) We accept the threefold division of human faculties into intellect, sensibility, and will. (b) Intellect is the soul knowing; sensibility is the soul feeling (desires, affections); will is the soul choosing (end or means). (c) In every act of the soul, all the faculties act. Knowing involves feeling and willing; feeling involves knowing and willing; willing involves knowing and feeling. (d) Logically, each latter faculty involves the preceding action of the former; the soul must know before feeling; must know and feel before willing. (e) Yet since knowing and feeling are activities, neither of these is possible without willing.