A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character

by Newell Dwight Hillis

IX

Conscience and Character[ToC]

Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better man within him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeper convictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of this whisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect so magisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession. The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify the revenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for her outrageous sins. But soon passed from memory that hateful night when the blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxury by day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to be forgotten. Soon a full year had passed over the palace with its silken seclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, a courtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter, whose name and fame were ringing through the land.

Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who is He? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly, conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror the despot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer's finger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow—a silent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod's conscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting a hooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale and drowned deed." The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastly atrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee—the agnostic of antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away. Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding a thousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Then were fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of a king, we would find it full of scars and black wounds." For no slave was ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed by his conscience.

Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must be reckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. None may deny the condemnation that weighed upon the soul of Herod or Judas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from Æschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distant province, he had taken the life and property of his master, and thereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had never been suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemn him to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here is the student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old and honored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered head from morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteen years before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despite the grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain, conscience bade him expiate his breach of filial piety. And here is Channing, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted his stick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But in that moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong." In his fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother's arms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered: "Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of God. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to that little voice."

Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man in the jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated. Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and serene. "Great God," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.

Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest thought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty—to pain us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending it authority.

We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they have portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life. That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in his "Les Misérables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped convict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and began life again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of the town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he was tried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison—this time for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys. Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? By confessing his identity and going himself.

In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room. Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through the trees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he go back again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must he resign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, so useful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life for this old man? Were not these two young wards whom he was supporting more than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go to the galleys.