This lengthened presentation of the evidence of the existence of the conscience as an essential endowment and part of human nature, may seem to the reader to have been unnecessary or beyond the importance of the question involved. But, as will appear hereafter, the firm establishment of this point is vitally needful, in order to exclude various forms of erroneous teaching and secure a firm and immovable foundation for a just ethical system.
[CHAPTER IV.]
THE FACULTY OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS—THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE.
Right View Necessary.
In close connection with the indubitable fact of conscience, as an essential faculty of the human soul, follows a more careful inquiry into the nature of this faculty. It is necessary to ascertain precisely, if possible, what it is as a peculiar psychical power, as revealed and defined in and by its own action.
1. The importance of determining, at this place, the exact nature of the conscience is apparent from two considerations.
Scientific Accuracy.
(1) Scientific accuracy in the whole ethical view is possible only through a true and thoroughly accurate understanding of the power that gives rise to the whole phenomenon of obligation. The final theoretical view is dependent on finding the truth at this point. Mistake or inexactness here must inevitably introduce, or at least allow, confusion or error in all the dependent questions of the science. A false conception of the conscience will at once mislead. Even an only partial or obscure view of it will fail to afford sufficient light for the subsequent steps of the investigation. A conception of it, with true and false elements combined, must necessarily introduce perplexity or contradiction and weaken or distort the conclusion.
Such differing views have in fact introduced the utmost confusion into the problems of this science. The conscience has sometimes been spoken of as an "instinct," which identifies it with the non-intelligent, blind action in the bee which builds cells after geometrical principles, or in birds or fishes which migrate with the changing seasons. Often it has been represented as but a special "feeling" or "sentiment" that arises inexplicably, if not fortuitously, prior to perception of any ethical quality, itself the basis of judgments of duty.[15] Again it has been made to stand simply for accumulated or established approbative judgments from experiences of pleasure or advantage, transformed and fixed as rules of conduct.[16] Sometimes it has been regarded as an immediate, almost supernatural "voice of God" within men, with its inexplicable direct imperative of duty. It is plain that these and other differing notions of conscience must always affect, as they always have affected, the whole theory of ethics.