(3) The result of thoughtful deliberation, carefully and logically designed to bring about certain preconceived "moral" ends such as social happiness, justice, fulfilment of duty; all of which are artificial and conventional standards, and good only because they are desirable, not because they are universally valid—irrespective of time, locality and circumstances; or
(4) Any combination of these three.
The foregoing applies as much to the aggregate moral consciousness of a community in different stages of civilization, or in varying states of emotional abnormality, as to the individual conscience.
It can also be shown that the "communal conscience" reacts upon the "individual conscience" in inverse ratio to the latter's emotional or intellectual capacity for resistance; and that the "communal conscience" (identified at a later stage of this inquiry with "Cosmic Suggestion") is the integral product of the numerical and dynamic strength of the convictions of the members of the community, and operates upon the "individual conscience," either consciously or subconsciously, in the same way that "Suggestion," according to the law discovered by Liébeault and employed by the Nancy School, operates in hypnotic phenomena.
It will then (if this view can be established) be shown that the factors of conscience are: (1) emotional, (2) intellectual, (3) internal (including hereditary and organic elements), and (4) external (environment—material and psychic); and that its validity, in ultimate analysis, can but rest on codes, which may be not only Conventional and Artificial, but also Rational or Intellectual, Social and Utilitarian; and in any case variable, in the same way that the soundest and most logical policies must, to a certain extent, be variable, or capable of adjustment as circumstances change; the only elements which should be constant and invariable in any policy (which is not a misnomer) being logic and truth. So it is with rules of conduct.
As regards the purely internal sanction of our actions and thoughts, that is to say, our relationship with Ultimate Reality, which is God or the Law of Existence, there is only one conception of the latter which seems to comprehend the infinite with the finite, and that is Force, because it is the continuity of Existence, or after the manner of Leibnitz: "Substance, the ultimate reality, can only be conceived as force." Any moral law which may be said to be fundamental in itself and independent of circumstances will be in relation to force. But such "laws" will also be independent of the moral imperatives and written codes, for they are independent of volition—of the will to obey them. Can a man be possessed of love, greatness, nobility, courage, honour, at a word of command? Therefore if it can be truly said that "love is the greatest thing in the world," it is because it is the most powerful force. Hate is disruptive, disintegrating and annihilating; love is integrating and strengthening.
But there is yet one "good," one fundamental imperative which needs no proof, and that is Truth—ultimate truth, because it is the statement of what Is; without which logic, or, indeed, intelligible language, would be impossible. But truth is not opinion, or assertion, or hope, or faith, or in the words of Huxley "those idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs." Truth and all its derivatives—honesty, integrity, truthfulness and sincerity—have an intrinsic value of their own, for their negation implies the negation of the principles of Existence.
But men require more than this, they require a "moral code" or standard to give coherence to their relationships; this code, then, is that which is desired, or imposed, and this want is most efficiently supplied by the principle of "Utility."
FOOTNOTES:
[13] See "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," p. 25.