These, then, are the essential conditions of moral agency—the possession of a conscience, and the power to obey or disobey the requirements of moral law. Both these conditions of accountability exist in man. By virtue of his constitution as a spiritual being made in the image of God, he is capable of perceiving what is inherently right, just, and good. His reason intuitively apprehends the good, and affirms the imperative obligation to choose the good. His judgment pronounces upon the relation of human conduct to the law of right, affirming man has or has not done right. And his emotive nature yields him complacence and joy as the reward of well-doing, or inflicts pain and remorse as the punishment of wrong-doing. In the words of Chalmers, "he is endowed with a conscience which performs within his bosom all the offices of a lawgiver and a judge."
The possession of this faculty necessarily supposes the existence of power in the agent to comply or not to comply with its behests. A moral law is designed only for the government of a free being, and nothing is moral or immoral which is not voluntary. If there is no self-determination, there is no proper personality to which the law of reason can attach. Remorse, on the one hand, satisfaction on the other, are emotions which are inconceivable and impossible in a being who is not consciously free.
The nature and authority of conscience is a question which is earnestly discussed. Among philosophers and theologians there are diverse and conflicting opinions. It has been variously characterized as a witness of our past actions; as a judgment passed upon our actions; or as a feeling arising in view of our actions. By one, conscience is regarded as an appetite—a craving for the right, but not a faculty intuitively perceiving the right. Another defines it "as a capacity and a tendency to inquire into duty, but not as supplying a law of duty."[514] While a third regards it as a state of the sensibility—"a simple feeling, emotion, or vivid sentiment which arises immediately in the mind in presence of certain actions, and to which we give the name of moral approbation."[515]
These definitions of conscience may all be regarded as containing some truth. They are all defective, however, in this one respect—they fail to recognize an internal law which constitutes a subjective standard of right, and an intuitive perception of moral distinctions and qualities in human action.
As an essay toward a clearer apprehension of the nature of conscience, we present the following propositions:
1. Conscience is not a distinct faculty of the mind. Conscience (conscientia = joint or double knowledge) is the knowledge of self in relation to a known law of right and wrong. Conscience and consciousness may therefore be regarded as, in some respects, identical. The terms in their etymology and their general import are synonymous. There is, however, a technical distinction to be made. Consciousness expresses self-knowledge in general. Conscience expresses self-knowledge relative to responsibility. Consciousness is the recognition by the thinking subject of its own states and affections. Conscience is the knowledge of an act or an affection as having some moral quality—as being right or wrong.
2. Conscience is, like consciousness, a complex phenomenon, the result of the simultaneous action of the primary powers of the mind. The simplest fact of consciousness is a synthesis of sensation and reason in a primitive psychological judgment. Sensation alone is not knowledge, and it becomes consciousness only as it is illuminated and informed by the reason. And so a mere state of the sensibility—a mere feeling of approbation or disapprobation—does not constitute conscience until it is informed by the reason. Conscience is the unity of feeling and reason in a judgment which has respect to voluntary action.
3. Conscience is the common field in which is revealed the result of the operation of all our faculties in their especial relation to moral law. As consciousness is the common field in which the results of the operation of all our faculties come to light, so conscience is that department of the same field in which is revealed the action of the mind in relation to the unchangeable principles of order and right which dwell in the bosom of the Infinite. Conscience is pre-eminently the Godward side of our mental being, which reflects the moral character of God, and brings us into relationship with Him. It is that which carries us per saltum to the immediate recognition of a God, the Lawgiver and the Judge who is over man, and which holds him in mysterious but indissoluble bonds of obligation. Conscience is therefore,
(1.) The reason intuitively apprehending universal moral ideas and laws. It furnishes the idea of the good. It affirms that the good is universally obligatory. It asserts that the good has desert, worthiness, and dignity. And it demands for the good an appropriate recognition and a just reward.
(2.) The understanding apprehending the relations in which we stand to God, to our fellow-beings, and to self as a moral personality endowed with reason and freedom.