The Theistic Conception of the World / An Essay in Opposition to Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought

by B. F. Cocker

(3.) The judgment comparing the acts of a voluntary agent existing in certain relations with the immutable ideas and laws of the reason, and affirming this is right and worthy of praise and reward, or that is wrong and deserving of blame and punishment.

(4.) A particular state of the sensibility—the painful or pleasurable emotions which spontaneously arise in presence of right or wrong in our own actions or in the actions of our fellow-men.

Thus conscience is, as it were, the focal point at which are united and blended the varied acts and states of the soul in its immediate relation to the moral law. It is the synthesis of moral ideas, cognitions, and feelings in a moral judgment.

The co-operation of these powers and susceptibilities of the soul in their relation to the good has a parallel and an illustration in their operation in relation to the beautiful.

The ideas of order, proportion, harmony, fitness, and unity in variety are unquestionably fundamental and necessary ideas of the reason. In the Divine reason these ideas have always existed as the laws in accordance with which He fashioned the material universe. And inasmuch as the human reason is configured to the Divine, these ideas must also exist in the human mind. Like statuary in the inner palaces of the soul, they are the models by which we recognize and the standards according to which we judge the forms of beauty in the external world. The correspondence between these external forms and the inner ideals of the reason is recognized by the judgment. And the delight we experience in presence of the beautiful in nature and art is a particular direction of the sensibility.

This is not, however, the chronological order in which the idea of the beautiful is developed in the mind. The sense of beauty first reveals itself in the spontaneous consciousness in presence of the order and harmony and fitness which pervade the universe. We experience delight without being able to specialize the precise causes of our pleasure. But the reflective consciousness, which is pre-eminently analytic, brings out into clear light the fundamental ideas of order, harmony, fitness, and unity, which had a prior existence in the reason, and have now recognized themselves as mirrored in the universe. The repeated observation of the forms of beauty around us, and the comparison of these with the standard ideas of the reason, will result in the beau-ideal of a pure and correct taste—true αἰσθητικόν.

So in relation to the idea of the good. It does not stand forth to the eye of consciousness, in the first instance, as an abstract conception. The moral sense—the affection of the sensibility in presence of voluntary and responsible action—is first revealed in the spontaneous consciousness. When we behold an act of justice, of kindness, of beneficence, we experience the fullest satisfaction. We admire and esteem the actor. We feel that his conduct is praiseworthy, and that he is deserving of honor and reward. These sentiments spring up spontaneously and involuntarily in our bosoms long before we have defined their reason and law. The reflective consciousness subsequently elicits the rational ideas which underlie these emotions—the ideas of the useful, the just, the beneficent, the noble, and the perfect, all which are finally embraced in the idea of the good. And the repeated comparison of the conduct of voluntary agents existing under certain relations, with the fundamental ideas of the reason, these standards of right erected in the soul, will result in an ideal of moral excellence—a true ἐθικόν.

If this doctrine of conscience be the product of a true psychological method, it will enable us to account for the apparent want of uniformity in its suffrages in individual cases, and the varied phenomena presented in different men.

Conscience, like consciousness, has its gradual development. Though natural and necessary to every human soul whose powers are normally developed, it is not exercised at the beginning of its existence, but only after certain conditions of growth and stages of growth have been attained. This development may be arrested or it may be perverted. The absence of proper conditions, the lack of suitable discipline and culture in any one of the faculties whose operation enters into the concrete phenomena, will modify the general result. An excess of sensibility will give a morbid conscience; the lack of sensibility, a slumbering conscience. A defective apprehension of the relations in which we stand to God and to our fellow-men will prevent our seeing our specific duties. Inattention to the character of our own motives, or ignorance of the real intentions of other men, may mislead the judgment in discriminating between the quality of actions. There are also natural differences in the soundness and accuracy of the judgments of individual men. We meet those who with a limited acquaintance with particular facts and abstract notions are nevertheless endowed with sound practical judgment; while others, with a larger knowledge of facts and general principles, are strangely defective in judgment. Finally, unless men accustom themselves to reflection, to analysis, the ideas of the just, the right, the good, do not come clearly into the light of consciousness. Hence the different manifestations of conscience in individual men.

We claim, however, that the moral ideas of the reason are in all men identical; that they exist and operate, even though unconsciously, in all minds, determining their moral judgments; and that when the same relations of personality are clearly before the mind the moral judgments of men are uniform.