CHAPTER IV
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1. Conscience Not a Separate Faculty but a Species of Judgment.-- 2. Conscience as Judgment of Moral Value--3. The Ground of Moral Judgment Is Usually Emotional Rather than Rational.--4. Intuitional and Empirical Theories of the Origin of the Moral Sentiments.--5. Experience as the Source of the Moral Sentiments.--6. The Idea of the Highest Good as the Rational Ground of the Moral Judgment.--7. Moral Enlightenment.--8. Importance of Conscience in Human Life.--9. Remorse.
If the Highest Good is to be realized in human conduct, it must (1) be known as an object of thought, and (2) appeal as an end of action, under which conditions it will (3) constitute the motive of good conduct. We shall, therefore, consider in the three chapters following: first, knowledge of the Good, or Conscience; second, the appeal of the Good, or Obligation; and, third, the Motive of Goodness.
1. Conscience Not a Separate Faculty but a Species of judgment. Men were for long supposed to receive knowledge of good and evil from a special faculty, Conscience, implanted in human nature for this purpose. To Conscience was assigned the supreme place among the cognitive faculties of man, as the final arbiter in all matters of conduct--a kind of oracle, in fact, revealing the mind of God upon all questions of right and wrong. Such a view was possible only so long as mind was understood as an assemblage of different faculties, and Psychology remained a general account of the achievements of these faculties. When, however, Psychology undertook a close, detailed analysis and description of mental processes, no evidence was found of the existence of conscience as a
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separate faculty. Our thinking upon moral subjects involves the same processes and follows the same laws as does our thinking upon other matters. Conclusions which pertain to questions of morality are subject to the same requirements of consistency and proof as are imposed on other conclusions. Indeed, moral judgment differs from all other judgment only in referring to a particular subject which possesses distinctive qualities. By conscience we mean, therefore, simply a species of judgment--judgment of moral value.
2. Conscience as judgment of Moral Value.
We have now to study as carefully as possible the working of conscience or moral judgment. Let us begin by analyzing a concrete instance of moral judgment, or the action of conscience.
Suppose that a person, sitting by a window facing the street, sees a group of boys approach a corner fruit-stand kept by an aged and decrepit woman. While one of the party engages the.attention of the woman with questions concerning the price of the fruit, others put a number of apples in their pockets, and then the whole party goes off laughing and shouting. The observer at the window, who has seen the performance, exclaims indignantly, “How wrong!” These words give expression to a moral judgment. The subject of this judgment is the conduct of the boys. Since moral value attaches only to voluntary action, the subject of all moral judgments is conduct. It is always upon the conduct of self or the conduct of others that conscience delivers its verdict. The quality attributed to the conduct of the boys in the above example--that of “wrongness”--is a kind of moral value. Here again we may generalize and note that the quality which as predicate is affirmed of the subject (conduct) in moral judgment is
i always a kind of moral value-moral judgment thus being an equation of conduct. Now moral value is of two
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opposite kinds, and hence the words which signify it fall into pairs of contraries, as good and bad, right and wrong, etc. The deliverances of conscience thus take the form of judgments in which the subject is conduct and the predicate some quality drawn from the class of moral values.
The moral judgment possesses the same characteristics as other judgment.1 When seriously affirmed moral judgment will not admit itself to be mere individual opinion, but claims to be true, to hold universally. As in the case of all other judgments, the universal validity claimed by moral judgment appears as a consequence of its necessity--that the particular judgment made had to be thus and so, and could not have been different, because certain other facts (themselves expressed in judgments) compelled it to take just this form. Thus in all our thinking our conclusions seem to be necessitated by antecedent facts or conclusions whose truth has been accepted. Now these antecedent facts or propositions upon which the truth of a judgment appears to rest are known as its grounds. Hence we are accustomed to challenge a judgment with the question, “What are its grounds? Its reasons?” This question is as legitimate with the moral judgment as with any other, and conscience must be prepared to answer satisfactorily, if its conclusions are to be accepted as true.
Imagine, then, that we asked the onlooker in our example, who judged the behavior of the boys to be wrong,
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the question, Why? ” Why do you think their conduct wrong? He would probably answer, ” Because it is stealing, of course.“ The ground of his judgment would therefore be another judgment which, completely expressed, would be, ” All stealing is wrong.“ The instance is again typical. The ground of a particular moral judgment is usually one of a set of judgments of a more general nature whose truth is already accepted, and which assign moral values to certain classes of actions. Of such nature are the familiar judgments, ” Stealing is wrong,“ ” Murder is wrong ... .. Kindness is right, ” etc. If it is true that the moral values mentioned belong to these general classes of action, then of course they will attach to all particular actions that fall within the classes Now a conclusion taken in connection with the grounds on which it rests is known as an inference. So moral judgment, becoming conscious of the other judgments which constitute its ground, expands into moral inference or reasoning. Referring again to our example, and using James's well-known formula2 the behavior of the boys represents the subject-matter of thought, S. From this behavior as a whole the onlooker singles out one feature that appears to him essential and most important-the feature, that is, of stealing, M. Now this feature enters into many forms of conduct and is recognized to possess certain properties, among them that of being wrong, P. Since P attaches to M and M belongs to S, P is attributable to S. The feature of theft is thus the connecting link or middle ground between the behavior of the boys and the quality of wrongness.
S -- M -- P This act is stealing and therefore wrong.
Or, putting the inference in the traditional form of the syllogism.
2 JAMES: Psychology, Chap. XXII, “Reasoning.”
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M --- P S --- M __________ S --- P All stealing is wrong. This act is stealing. ______________________
(Therefore) This act is wrong.
3. The Ground of the Moral judgment Is Usually Emotional Rather than Rational.
But the question of the ground of moral judgment is by no means settled when we explicitly refer the particular act to a class of actions previously, judged to be good or bad. This prior judgment itself needs support and the question is quite legitimate, on what ground do we hold general forms of conduct such as lying, stealing, courage, or kindness to. be right or wrong? For these judgments if true must themselves be necessary consequences of other facts or considerations. Suppose now that we asked the observer at the window, who had indignantly pronounced the conduct of the boys to be wrong because it was stealing, the further question, “Why is stealing wrong?” If he exemplified the average man he would probably show signs of surprise and impatience at the question, and reply, ” Why is stealing wrong? Why --because it is wrong! ” or in some such words. That is, the great majority of human beings do not carry their reasoning on moral matters back further than the judgment that certain forms of conduct, such as e.g. courage and honesty and kindness, are right, and other forms, such as stealing and lying and murder, are wrong. Actions belonging to these recognized classes excite strong feelings--of approval in the former group and disapproval in the latter. Hence whenever an action is encountered which falls within such familiar class, it is greeted immediately by feelings of approval or the reverse, and thus its moral value, whether good or bad, appears self-evident. The
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binding force of conscience, Mill says, ” consists in the existence of q mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate this standard, will probably have to be encountered afterwards in the form of remorse.”3 These moral feelings seem to justify themselves and to require no further explanation. It is true, therefore, that with the greater number of mankind the ultimate ground of moral judgment is emotional rather than rational.4 Of course this is not the case with the moral judgment alone. The average man has reasons for comparatively few of the conclusions he maintains. He nevertheless regards them as true, since they awaken the sentiment of belief in him. In this way the uneducated man feels that the claim of his political party or the doctrines of his church are necessarily true, and resents the challenge to furnish proof. Perhaps the facts with reference to the moral judgment are most concisely stated when we say that in the minds of those who have never reflected upon questions of morality and who make up of course the great bulk of mankind, the ground of all moral judgments is a set of moral sentiments. By a moral, sentiment is meant a judgment of moral value, accompanied by feelings of pleasure if the conduct is judged good, and displeasure if found bad.5 A group of such sentiments, approving of some forms of conduct and disapproving of others, is present in the minds of most men, and constitutes the basis of their moral judgments.
4. Intuitional and Empirical Theories of the Origin of Moral Sentiments. The existence of moral sentiments similar in character among civilized peoples, and hence
3 MILL: Utilitarianism, Chap. III.
4 THILLY: Introductory Ethics, Chap. III, pp. 77-79.
5 For a good description of the various sentiments, intellectual, moral, and religious, in their relation to other mental processes, cf. TITCHNER: Primer of Psychology, Chap. XII.
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familiar to us all, has now to be explained. Two conflicting theories as to their origin have arisen in the course of ethical reflection. The Intuitional theory regards these sentiments as fundamental intuitions of mind. They are, the Intuitionist maintains, a part of our innate mental endowments property essential to the mind itself. Some Intuitionists have emphasized the intellectual factor in moral sentiment, declaring that we have an inborn ability to distinguish good from bad, whose deliverances bear the mark of self-evident truth. Other Intuitionists have considered the emotional element as more important, and have held that man possessed an innate “moral sense,” a faculty which reacts with feelings of liking and approval to certain forms of conduct, and with feelings of dislike and disapproval to others. The Empirical theory, on the other hand, explains existing moral sentiments as wholly the product of experience. This experience is both racial and individual. The results of the experience of the race in discovering that certain kinds of action are advantageous are inherited by the individual in the form of a sentiment approving of this type of action. The experience of the individual himself-the circumstances of his life, the influences to which he has been subjected-is also a cause for the moral sentiments which he possesses, according to the Empirical view.
Of these two positions the Intuitional is the more difficult to maintain. The Intuitionist proposes an explanation of the origin of the moral sentiments which is clearly inapplicable to other sentiments of a similar character. For of course it is not his moral judgments alone that the ordinary man feels to be necessary, without adequate reasons. The case is exactly the same with the most of his judgments on social, political, and religious matters. No one would think of asserting, however, that sentiments on these subjects, no matter how widespread among the
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inhabitants of a country, were fundamental intuitions of the human mind. On the contrary, it is a commonplace observation that most men derive their political opinions, their religious belief and their social outlook, from their parentage and early training. The Intuitionist proposes now to make an exception of the moral sentiments, and because these possess a strength-and authority which cannot be justified on rational grounds, to assign to them a unique origin, as innate properties of the mind itself. It is consistent with this general standpoint to conceive of the moral sentiments as “divinely implanted” in human nature, after the same manner of thinking that regards conscience as the voice of God in the human soul. In fact, the theory that the moral sentiments are intuitions innate in the mind of man is closely affiliated with the “special faculty” view of conscience, both leaning toward a supernatural explanation of morality.
Moreover, the Intuitional theory has an important implication which we cannot at present accept. If the moral sentiments are an essential-part of the mental endowment of man we should expect to find them present in the minds of men of all races and times. Or even if we admit that the higher sentiments are at first present potentially, and only come to clear consciousness in the course of human history and development, it is nevertheless a necessary implication of the Intuitional view that the existing sentiments of mankind as they concern such fundamental forms of conduct as murder and stealing and lying must agree. Intuitionists soon recognized this implication and felt the crucial importance of the point which it raised. Hence the defense of Intuitionism has consisted largely of an attempt on the part of its advocates to prove that there is an agreement in the moral sentiments of mankind. Champions of the opposing school summoned all the facts at their command to show that not unanimity but radical disagreement
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has prevailed among different peoples-in matters of morality. Thus the controversy continued. Now it is not difficult to prove that there is a substantial agreement in moral sentiment among men, if we confine ourselves to civilized or comparatively civilized peoples of our own time. As long, then, as continents containing savage or barbarous races remained unexplored and there was little or no knowledge of the early history of human society, the Intuitionist was able to uphold his side of the controversy with a fair degree of success. But since the world has been thoroughly explored and its various peoples studied, and in particular since the discovery of evolution has given such an impetus to all, ethnological and anthropological investigation, a mass of facts relative to human morality has been collected which makes the Intuitional view utterly untenable. Such studies of the evolution of human morality as those recently made by Westermarck6 and Hobhouse7 show a disagreement in moral belief and practice among different peoples and periods which cannot be reconciled with the theory of moral intuitions. If there is a duty that is fundamental it would seem to be that of respecting the life of fellow-man. Yet we find that in early stages of human society no rights at all attach to the human being as such.8 The stranger may be killed or tortured at pleasure, and the life of fellow-clansman is respected not because he is recognized as possessing any rights as a human individual, but because his interest is identified with that of the agent. A moral sentiment which is widespread and might seem to be universal is that disapproving of stealing; yet among some peoples theft is not regarded as dishonorable, and among others is even admired as a clever trick.9 The disapproval of lying is sufficiently general to
6 WESTERMARCK: Origin and Development of Moral Ideas.
7 HOBHOUSE: Morals in Evolution.
8 HOBHOUSE: Op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 240.
9 HOBHOUSE: Op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 334.
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suggest that it is based upon an intuition inherent in the human mind; yet in certain tribes, authorities inform us, a successful lie is a matter of popular admiration.10 In fact we rind diversity almost without limit in the moral sentiments of mankind. To be sure, the same investigations which have revealed such widespread divergence in the opinions and customs of men in matters of morality, have also shown the presence in human conduct of a tendency to develop-of an evolution in morals, in fact, which has a definite goal and is governed by universal principles.11 But such tendency toward a consistent and regular development indicates that human morality is the expression of a single unitary power or capacity rather than that it rests upon a set of ready-made intuitions.
5. Experience as the Source of Moral Sentiments. We are forced by these facts to believe that the moral sentiments of the vast majority of men have their origin, in experience, as the Empiricist has maintained. They are in a true sense the product of conditions of life, of influences of environment, as these have acted upon the individual and the race. Of course the presence in man of an ability to adapt himself to the conditions of social existence, and that with constantly increasing intelligence, must be presupposed. But the special beliefs and customs called forth by the requirements of social life under human conditions find their explanation in the particular circumstances that evoked them rather than in this general capacity of voluntary intelligence. The fact that the moral
10 WESTERMARCK: Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 72.
11 Hobhouse believes that “Thus, amid all the variety of social institutions and the ebb and flow of historical change, it is possible in the end to detect a double movement marking the transition from the lower to the higher levels of civilized law and custom.” This “double movement” is that in which humanity both in the sense of the whole human race and of the human nature in each one of us is progressively realized.--HOBHOUSE: Op. cit., Vol. 1, Summary, pp. 367-68.
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sentiments which exist at any time are the result of the experience of the race, or of a considerable fraction of it, acquired during ages previous, is of great importance in explaining the agreement of moral sentiment among different members of human society and also the authority which these sentiments possess over the individual. Indeed, Spencer thinks that when we see our moral judgments, as the result of the experience of remote ancestors transmitted to their progeny by physical heredity, and thus become part of our native endowment, we both recognize the large amount of truth contained in the view of Intuitionism that the moral sentiments are innate properties of mind, and at the same time reconcile this view with that of Empiricism.12 Spencer himself finds no difficulty in believing that opinions and practices acquired by the human individual during his life-time may be inherited by his descendants and finally become ingrained in the stock or race as fixed instincts. But since his time biologists have found good reason for disbelieving that such acquisitions are ever transmitted through the channels of natural inheritance. Hence we cannot depend upon physical heredity to explain the perpetuation of moral sentiments, nor is it legitimate to consider them as instincts formerly acquired but now inborn.
It is quite possible to account for the development and conservation of the moral experience of the race through the operation of another factor, however--“social heredity.” By social heredity is meant the transmission through the instrumentality of language, imitation, and suggestion,
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of the accumulated experience of the race to each successive generation of individuals. Through this channel, by means of instruction and training, the moral tradition of a society is communicated to its youthful members. This explanation makes it evident that the individual's own experience is the source of his social and religious sentiments-the home and the school existing as special agencies for influencing him during his earliest and most susceptible years, and producing in him those beliefs and convictions, those habits and dispositions, which are approved by the society of which he is a member.
We are hence reduced to the individual's own experience--the circumstances of his early life, his home training, his education at school, his associates and friends, and the other numberless influences, social and economic, that have acted upon him during his formative period-as the main source of his moral sentiments. This explanation may seem utterly inadequate when we think of the absolute authority claimed by the deliverances of conscience, of the peculiar dignity and even sanctity they possess, of the sense of reverence they awaken. Yet if we consider for a moment the character of this experience,-how well it is adapted to produce just such results,-it will not seem so insufficient as a source of authoritative moral sentiment. The child has the current moral distinctions brought home to him at a very early age. Every device is used to impress his sensitive feelings and imaginations.13 Parents and nurse agree in regarding certain acts with frowns and looks of horror, while others are greeted with smiles and expressions of pleasure. Punishments begin to follow actions of the former class-with threats of penalties still more dire for one who persists in striking or lying or stealing. The growing love of the child is appealed to, he being told that parents can continue to love and cherish only children
13 THILLY: Op. cit., Chap. III, § 8, “Genesis of Conscience.”
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who are obedient, truthful, etc. Then the religious factor is often introduced, and God is alluded to as a Mysterious Being who is particularly interested in these matters of right and wrong, and Who, having an eye which is all-seeing, and a power which knows no limit, will finally inflict dreadful penalties upon those who continue to do wrong, and bestow corresponding rewards upon the good and obedient. The terrors of the law are frequently invoked, and the prison referred to as the place where the dishonest, the untruthful, the violent, are confined. In the school the boy or girl encounters another authority able to enforce the same set of distinctions by sanctions of its, own. Finally he meets the all-powerful influence of public opinion which visits social opprobrium and ostracism upon the head of the individual who dares to disregard conventional standards or transgress approved customs. Small wonder, then, that the moral sentiments traditional in a society acquire an almost hypnotic power over its members--such principles as “Stealing is wrong,” “Lying is wrong,” having acquired through early associations, vague memories, and a bias given in childhood to the whole nature, a greater power over the attention than objects which awaken the strongest natural desires.
6. The Idea of the Highest Good as the Rational Ground of Moral judgment.
Are we to conclude, because the moral sentiments of most human beings have their source in experience and not in reflective reason, that, therefore, the moral judgment can have no rational ground? By no means. The moral judgment can have as secure a basis in reason as any other judgment and may lay claim to the same objective validity. For the moral judgment is essentially a judgment of value-a particular kind of value called moral. Now this value is possessed by all objects capable of fulfilling the demands of volition. But the summum bonum is by definition that end which is able
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to satisfy completely the capacity of human volition. Hence when the Highest Good is discovered it will furnish the rational ground of moral judgment; since whatever action can be shown to be a means to its attainment will be proved to have positive moral value or goodness, while every action which hinders its attainment will in a like manner be proved bad. To be sure, the connection between a particular act and the attainment of the Good is not always apparent. At this point, then, deliberation must enter; the consequences of the proposed action must be followed out in imagination until its hearing upon the attainment of the Good is ascertained. Thus a number of considerations are introduced which serve to connect the moral judgment finally rendered with its ultimate ground. Reverting to our previous illustration and assuming for the sake of argument that Social Welfare is the Good, moral reflection might take the following course: ” This act is stealing; stealing violates the rights of private ownership; the institution of private property is necessary to social welfare; this act is thus opposed to social welfare, and therefore wrong.” In this way the reasons for any moral judgment are exhibited in full and, granting that the summum bonum is correctly understood, the argument is valid and the conclusion true for all persons.
Inasmuch as the summum bonum constitutes the ultimate6 ground of moral judgment it may be said to furnish conscience with a standard or criterion of moral value. It stands for perfect goodness in human conduct, and by reference to it, consequently, the pretensions of any act to be good can be tested. We secure in this way no magic oracle of right or wrong, however; for after the Good is discovered its use as a standard of moral value will be beset by many difficulties. Its relation to a particular action may be very hard to make out, the situation calling for most painstaking analysis and careful study. Suppose
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that the act under consideration is that of telling a friend of certain faults he possesses. In the present circumstances, will it be right or wrong, my duty or not? Let us say further that the Highest Good is, in our opinion, the Well-Being of Humanity. This, then, must constitute our standard of moral value. Is it easily applied? Is it a simple matter to ascertain the bearing of telling my friend a disagreeable truth-upon human welfare? Obviously not, yet it is a task which reason must undertake and discharge to the best of its powers. The possibility of wounding my friend's feelings, destroying our friendship, and thus perhaps lessening the social efficiency of us both, must be considered. But, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that a word from me may lead him to overcome his fault, with great increase of his own happiness and his serviceability to his fellow-mein. Then the effect of candor in social relations generally might be considered, and account taken of the help which an individual derives from the frank and kindly criticism of his fellows. To be sure, the same opportunity for slips and errors exists here as in all other reasoning, and the individual who thinks out moral problems for himself is liable to frequent mistake. At least, however, he is determining his conduct in a manner befitting the dignity of an intelligent being--freely, and in accordance with conclusions of his own reason.
7. Moral Enlightenment.
Thus to substitute rational insight as the basis of moral judgment, for feelings produced by experience and training, is to enlighten conscience and rationalize morality. It is, as we know, just the aim of Ethics to evaluate conduct rationally, i.e. in accordance with the demands of the Moral Ideal. The necessity for constant exertion to secure means of subsistence has left the vast majority of mankind--up to the present--neither the time nor the strength for ethical
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reflection. Doubtless, for a long period in the future as well, most men will be compelled to receive their moral sentiments ready made through various influences of custom and tradition. Yet an increasing number are gaining the education and leisure requisite for systematic reflection upon the problems of conduct. With such, the conventional moral sentiments inculcated in childhood are surd to lose their authority. The individual will challenge the right of the accepted moral code to rule over him and summon it to appear for examination before the bar of bis own reason. Then indeed is the crisis, when the traditional moral sentiments must justify themselves to reason or suffer entire repudiation in favor of some plan of life original with the individual. It is at this juncture that Ethics may be especially useful in guiding the thought of the individual when he endeavors for himself to evaluate different forms of conduct and alternative ends, and, the larger grow the numbers of individuals undertaking to think for themselves upon matters of morality, the more general will be the need of ethical instruction.
Fortunately, however, moral enlightenment does not necessarily, or even frequently, entail the wholesale abandonment of conventional beliefs and practices. Nor should we expect that it would, when we remember that conventional morality expresses, in general at least, what the experience mankind has found to contribute most to the welfare human society. Moral enlightenment does not mean, therefore, that all moral judgments previously accepted could at present be abandoned, but rather that they should now gain a new and higher authority-the authority of reason in place of that of custom and tradition. The ties of current morality are seen to derive their authority from their relation as means to some end of attested value, I not to be ends in themselves, both arbitrary and
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absolute. Thus in the case of telling my friend a disagreeable truth about himself, conventional morality would exact a rigid and mechanical obedience to the rule, Tell the truth, with the result that the friend might become estranged from me, while his fault remained uncorrected. Rational morality, on the other hand, is more flexible and can be adapted to the requirements of differing cases; it would permit me to study the case of my friend and would pronounce good that action which I concluded would be for his best welfare and the promotion of the highest human good. But while moral enlightenment thus requires us to establish our morality upon a new foundation, it by no means renders valueless the early training in approved moral practices or the acquisition of the conventional moral sentiments. For, after these beliefs and practices have secured a new basis in reason, it is still of incalculable benefit to have them already ingrained in the nervous system in the form of fixed habits. It is this tremendous boon that moral training confers upon the individual, and that makes this training worth all the efforts which parents and teachers can put into it. What if moral enlightenment does lead the individual to renounce one practice out of ten learned in early childhood? Surely less effort is required to break this one habit than to form the other nine entirely new.
8. Importance of Conscience in Human Life.
Since Conscience represents man's Highest Good, either as discovered by him through reflection or expressed for him in the customs of his race, it is not strange that it should have been given an exalted position among human faculties. Conscience is only a particular manifestation of the power of human intelligence, to be sure;14 but it is human in-
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intelligence in the most important of its many fields of exercise, when it_deals, not with this interest or that, but with the satisfaction of the whole of man's will, latent as well as actual--the fulfillment of all his possibilities as a voluntary agent. As Professor Royce says: ” Your conscience is simply that ideal of life which constitutes your moral personality. In having your conscience you become aware of your plan of being yourself and nobody else. Your conscience presents to you this plan, however, in so far as the plan or ideal in question is distinct from the life in which you are trying to embody your plan. Your life, as it is lived, your experiences, feelings, deeds,--these are the embodiments of your ideal plan, in so far as your ideal plan for your own individual life as this self, gets embodied at all.”15 If conscience is not the voice of God in the mind of man it at least speaks for those powers in human nature which raise him above the animals and link him to what is highest in reality-his comprehensive intelligence, his free will. The insight which we have gained into the function of conscience in human life compels us now to qualify somewhat the statement formerly made that in most human beings conscience is determined in its decisions by custom and training and not by any real understanding of the Good. While it is true that the moral sentiments which direct the conduct of the majority must be referred to these sources rather than to their own intelligent understanding of the issues involved, it is also true that the operation of these sentiments is accompanied by a consciousness, more or less vague, that they stand for the larger good of the self. Even when the particular moral judgments of an individual are wholly determined by custom, the compulsion which he feels to bring his acts under general rubrics for purposes of moral evolution is itself a dim
15 Royce:: Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 175.
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recognition of the existence of a Good authoritative over all actions because representing the satisfaction of man's larger will. Then there are the suggestions of the Ideal, confused but never forgotten, and hopes inarticulate but ever-stirring, which, even in the least intelligent and aspiring of men, connect themselves with the duties of conventional morality and cause them to appear as means to a higher personal good.
9. Remorse.
After performing the action which conscience pronounces right, particularly if it be in the face of strong opposing inclination, a sense of profound satisfaction is felt. For the wrong desire, expressing a merely temporary need, has in retrospect lost its appeal, while the relatively permanent good secured by conscience continues to give satisfaction. - Contrariwise, when conscience is thwarted for the sake of present desire, a feeling of great dissatisfaction may arise. For the Good, as represented by Conscience, is enduring in its appeal, and thus while momentary desire once gratified is destroyed, this appeal of Goodness, disregarded and unrealized, continues, and awakens in the consciousness of the wrongdoer an overwhelming sense of guilt and misery. This feeling of sorrow and distress, which frequently follows the doing of evil, is called remorse. Darwin, who finds the beginning of conscience in the phenomena of remorse, explains the origin of this latter experience in biological terms.
“At the moment of action man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men. But after their gratification, when past and weaker impressions are judged by the ever-enduring social instinct, and by his deep regard for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution will surely come. He will then feel remorse, repentance, regret, or shame; this latter feeling, however, relates almost exclusively to the judgment of others. He will consequently resolve more or less firmly to
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act differently for the future; and this is conscience; for conscience looks backward and serves as a guide for the future. ” 16
While the conception of instinct as here used by Darwin to explain the beginnings of morality is clearly inadequate, yet as far as the relation of the factors involved is concerned, his explanation of remorse is fundamentally true. Conscience has charge of man's larger social and personal good, and one who violates its dictates in order to gratify momentary desire or to further selfish interest, betrays himself, is a traitor to the larger possibilities of his own nature as a man. He sells his birthright as a rational being for the pottage of present pleasure. Because wrong-doing is thus a betrayal of the whole human self, an evil deed, in itself appearing trivial, may awaken in the agent a sense of degradation that seems to affect his whole nature. Literature gives us many examples, imaginary but not exaggerated, of such soul-rending remorse with its agony over lost opportunities for good and its torment by evil that cannot be undone-suffering so great that the unfortunate individual is driven to sacrifice his life in an attempt at expiation or to destroy himself in the depth of his despair.
REFERENCES
THILLY, Introduction to Ethics, Chaps. III, IV.
ALEXANDER, Moral Order and Progress, Book II, Part I, Chap. III.
ROYCE, Philosophy of Loyalty, Chap. IV.
MARTINEAU, Types of Ethical Theory, Part II, Book I, Chap. I.
LESLIE STEPHEN, Science of Ethics, Chap. VIII.
MACKENZIE, Manual of Ethics, Book II, Chaps. V, VI.
16 DARWIN: Descent of Man, Chap. IV.
