(2) In other words, he may come upon an intuitive judgment. And the thoughtful man who talks about his conscience is rarely satisfied with a blind intuition; he wants to be sure he is right, and he thinks the whole matter over.
(3) The feeling and the judgment are not necessarily in accord. The feeling may lag behind an enlightened judgment. On the other hand, the feeling of repugnance to acting in certain ways may be a justifiable protest against a bit of intellectual sophistry.
(4) So much ought to be admitted by everyone who holds that conscience may be blunted or may be enlightened. Consciences vary indefinitely. Some we set down as hopelessly below the average; others we reverence as refined and enlightened. The social worker makes it his aim to "awaken" conscience, to cultivate it, to bring it up to a high standard. No practical moralist regards the conscience of the individual as something which must simply be left to itself and treated as sacred, no matter what its character.
(5) The above sufficiently explains some of the puzzles which confront the man who reverences conscience and yet studies the consciences of his fellow-men. He finds that the individual conscience is not an infallible guide-post pointing to right action; that it is not a perfect time- keeper, in complete accord with the watches of other men.
"It's a turrible thing to have killed the wrong man," said the conscience-stricken illicit distiller in his mountain fastness. "I never seen good come o' goodness yet; him as strikes first is my fancy," said the dying pirate in "Treasure Island." Augustine, passing over much worse offences, exhausts himself in agonies of remorse over a boyish prank. [Footnote: See chapter xx, Sec 78.] Seneca draws up a list of the most horrifying crimes, and decides that ingratitude exceeds them all in enormity. [Footnote: On Benefits, i, 10.]
(6) It appears to be quite evident that consciences ought to be standardized, and that the standard should be made a high one. The true standard is the one set by the Rational Social Will. It is as much a duty to have a good conscience as it is to obey the conscience one has.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE ETHICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
151. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM?—Men collected into groups and organized in various ways we call states, and we treat a state as a unit. We look upon it as having rights and as owing duties both to individuals and to other states. There are individuals whom we are apt to regard as representatives of the state; as instruments, rather than as men— executive officers, legislators, official interpreters of its laws, whether good or bad. For states and their representatives we often have especial moral standards, differing more or less from those by which we judge human beings merely as human beings. It is with the morality of the latter that I am here concerned.
To be sure, all human beings are to be found in states, or in that rudimentary social something which foreshadows the state. To talk of the morality of the isolated individual is nonsense. Morality is the expression of the social will; and if we think of even Robinson Crusoe as a good man, it means that we apply to him social standards. Had he not been moralized, he would have killed and eaten Friday, when the latter made his appearance.