It will, I need scarcely say, be objected to the arguments which have now been presented, that conscience is a product of association or a consequence of evolution; that it has been developed either in the experience of individuals or in the course of ages, out of sensations of pleasure and pain, out of benefits and injuries; and that the convictions and feelings implicated in it are due to the circumstances under which it has grown up and the causes which have combined to generate it. But to this it may be answered either that conscience has not been shown to have grown up by association and development out of sensuous experiences, or that even if this were proved the argument would continue good; in other words, either the truth or the relevancy of the objection may be denied. All associationist and evolutionist theories of conscience seem to many of the most competent psychologists to have failed as regards their main object, although they may admit them to contain important elements of truth. This view I share. It does not seem to me that even Mr J. S. Mill, Prof. Bain, Mr Spencer, and Mr Darwin, have been able to show that conscience contains in it nothing original. But, of course, I am aware that the vindication of my dissent would require an adequate examination of associationism and evolutionism as explanations of the origin of conscience. No such examination is here possible. Nor is it required; on the contrary, a discussion of the kind ought, I believe, to be avoided in an inquiry like the present. No psychological investigation of a difficult and delicate nature is, so far as I can judge, essentially involved in the theistic argumentation at any stage. It is certainly unnecessary in conducting the moral argument to engage in any scientific disquisition as to the origin of conscience.[39] For our second or alternative answer will suffice. It does not matter, so far as our present purpose is concerned, whether conscience be primary or derivative. It exists; it bears a certain testimony; it gives rise necessarily to the thoughts and feelings which I have mentioned. Are these thoughts and feelings true? If not, conscience is a delusion; it utters lies; the completest moral scepticism is justified. If they are, the argument stands. The mode in which they have been acquired is in this reference a matter of indifference.
The argument from conscience, I may add, rests on the general and distinctive characteristics of our moral nature; not on the truth of particular moral judgments or the purity of particular moral affections. It cannot, therefore, be affected by the fact that moral perceptions and emotions admit of variation and development, and are sometimes false and depraved. However important in other respects may be the circumstance that men's thoughts and sentiments as to right and wrong are not always identical or even accordant, it is plainly irrelevant as an objection to any of the forms in which the argument for the Divine existence from the constitution of our moral nature has just been stated. It cannot be necessary to do more than merely indicate this, although some who maintain the wholly derivative nature of conscience appear to believe that the moral differences to be traced among men disprove all inferences from the moral faculty which they feel disinclined to accept.
II.
Is the testimony which conscience gives to the existence and character of God confirmed when we look out into the moral world? No one will say that all is clear and unambiguous in that world—that it is nowhere shrouded in unpenetrated, if not impenetrable, darkness—that it contains no perplexing anomalies. There is an enormous mass of sin on earth, and the mere existence of sin is a mystery under the government of an omnipotent God who hates sin. There is a vast amount of apparently prosperous sin, and a vast amount of temporarily suffering virtue, and these are often severe trials of faith in the justice and holiness of God. Pessimism may exaggerate the emptiness and the sadness of life, but it has done service by exposing and discrediting the optimism which ignores the dark features and tragic elements of existence. Can an unprejudiced mind, however, even with all the sins and sufferings of the world before its view, and although consciously unable to resolve the difficulties which they suggest, refuse to acknowledge that the general testimony rendered by the moral world to the being and righteousness of its Author is ample and unmistakable? I think not. The conclusion which we have drawn from the character of the sentiments inevitably excited by the contemplation of virtue and vice, is also that which follows from the natural tendencies and issues of good and evil affections and actions. Virtue does not always meet with its due reward, nor vice with its due punishment, in any obvious outward shape; if they did, earth would cease to be a scene of moral discipline; but internal moral laws of an essentially retributive nature are in incessant operation, and show not obscurely or doubtfully what is the judgment of God both on character and conduct. Virtue is self-rewarding and vice is self-punishing. Virtue tends of its very nature to honour and life, vice to dishonour and death. There are outward bonds between virtue and happiness, vice and misery, which may be severed; but there are also inward bonds which cannot be broken—relations of cause and effect as inflexible as any in the physical world. Virtue may be followed by no external advantages, or may even involve the possessor of it in suffering; but infallibly it ennobles and enriches, elevates and purifies the soul itself, and thus gradually and increasingly imparts "a peace above all earthly dignities." Vice may outwardly prosper and meet only with honour from men, but it cannot be said to be passing wholly unpunished so long as it weakens, poisons, and corrupts the spiritual constitution. Now this it always does, and never more actively than when the individual who is guilty has silenced the voice of his conscience, and when a depraved society encourages him in his wickedness. The law—"he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption"—is never even for an instant suspended, although the growth and ripening of the seed into its fruit may be unobserved. In the very commission of sin the soul violates the conditions of its own welfare, destroys its own best feelings, impoverishes and ruins itself.
"He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun—
Himself is his own dungeon."[40]
When we look from individuals to societies, we perceive the same truth confirmed on a more comprehensive and conspicuous scale. It is true that in the social world there are bad triumphs and impious successes—that the victory of good over evil is often reached only after a long series of defeats. But it is equally true that the welfare of society is dependent on a practical recognition of moral principles—that the laws of morality are conditions of the progress, and even of the existence, of society. A cynical moralist of the eighteenth century maintained that private vices were public benefits; but, of course, his sophisms were easily exposed: he failed to convince any one of the correctness of his paradox. No inductive truth can be easier to establish, or better established, than that righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin lowers and destroys it. The vicious affections which torment and debase isolated men, equally disturb and degrade a tribe or nation. The virtuous affections which diffuse peace and happiness in a single heart, equally spread harmony and prosperity through the largest community. Thus the general conditions of social life testify that God loves virtue and hates vice. Then, if we examine history as a whole, we cannot but recognise that it has been in the main a process of moral progress, of moral growth. The children of the present day may be born with no better dispositions than those of five thousand years ago, and men may be now as guilty, as wilful sinners against what they know to be right, as ever they were; in that sense there may be no moral progress; but of this there can be, I think, no reasonable doubt in the mind of any impartial student of history, that the thoughts of men have been surely, if slowly, widened as to liberty, chastity, justice, benevolence, piety—and that their feelings have been correspondingly modified, their manners refined, and their laws and institutions improved. There may be no such thing as the inheritance or transmission of virtue, and every step of moral advance may have to be gained by the free exertion of each individual, people, and generation in succession; but, as a matter of fact, our race does on the whole advance, and not recede, in the path towards good. Just as reason, although it may be feebler than the passions in a short struggle, can always conquer them if it get time to collect its energies—so virtue gains and vice loses advantages with the lapse of years; for, while the prejudices which opposed the former subside and its excellences become ever increasingly apparent, as history flows onward, those who leagued themselves in support of the latter quarrel among themselves, its fascinations decay, and its deformities become more manifest and repulsive. Age is linked to age, and in the struggle of good and evil which pervades all the ages, victory is seen slowly but steadily declaring itself for the good. The vices die—the virtues never die. Some great evils which once afflicted our race have passed away. What great good has ever been lost? Justice carries it over injustice in the end. Now, whatever be the means by which moral progress is brought about, the testimony which it involves as to the moral character of God is none the less certain. The successful application of Darwinian principles, for example, to the explanation of human progress, would be no disproof of design in social evolution. If a natural selection, based on force, were shown to have prepared the way for a natural selection based on craft, which in its turn gave place to justice, and that again to love, God must none the less be credited with having contemplated the final result, and that result must none the less be held to be an indication of His character. When what is called the struggle for existence has been proved to lead, not to the deterioration but to the improvement of life—to the greatest abundance of the highest kinds of life possible in the circumstances—it will have been vindicated and shown to have been a means to secure such ends as a wise and benevolent Being would entertain. When it has been proved to have constrained men gradually to recognise that the virtues are the conditions of the most desirable existence, and that the vices are so many obstacles to the attainment of such an existence, it will have been still further vindicated by having been thus shown to be the mode in which righteousness is realised in the world. It matters little, so far as the religious inference is concerned, after what natural process and by what natural laws moral progress has been brought about; for whatever the process and laws may be discovered to be, they will be those which God has chosen, and will be fitted to show forth the glory of His wisdom, love, and justice.[41]