Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/387

 THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE 371.

the new arrivals out to die. Scarcely any scruple prevailed at that time among the highly intelligent people of Athens con- cerning such conduct. It was done as a matter of course. The short interval of two thousand years has elapsed. And now, if a man were to take such a step, whoever he might be, a jury of his peers would sentence him to death forthwith. If the act were deliberately done, there would probably be no debate on the matter at all.

Conscience existed to an extraordinary degree in certain respects among the Greek people. The stage of Athens was a great ethical platform or school for ethical instruction. But scruples with regard to life, and respect for life as such, had not yet developed. I suppose that a man of ordinary moral sense or intelligence in this country today, who should act on a first impulse and throw away the life of his child, might be haunted with remorse to a degree we can scarcely describe. It would not be surprising if such a person after a while were to give him- self up to the law and ask to be punished for his crime.

In an act of this latter kind we see developing, along with conscience as a sentiment, a certain peculiar element of authority which would appear to be wanting in the moral sense as it shows itself in its most rudimentary or incipient phases. It is this compelling characteristic or element of authority which is one of the most perplexing features to explain or account for. The man who has been guilty of a crime, and voluntarily surrenders himself to justice, would seem to be acting under an influence as powerful as that of hypnotic suggestion. He is taking a course from which he shrinks, and against which the ordinary self within him will loudly rebel ; but by and by that force becomes so strong that he cannot refuse to listen to it, until at last he may give up and yield to an authority in himself which he is unable to account for and which he would be glad to repudiate.

It is in the effort to explain this authoritative element in con- science that the philosophical mind has displayed its greatest acumen. But I doubt whether the effort as yet has been suc- cessful. By some persons it is accounted for as the "voice of