Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/394

 378 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ences of the soul have another character. So long as the human creature is just a part of the social tissue, the relations to be considered in the applications of the moral sense to conduct are those between man and his fellows. If we pronounce judg- ment, we should say that an act was wrong because it injured another man. On the other hand, when the soul has assumed its real shape, the judgment is pronounced from another stand- point. The act might be beneficial to a fellow-creature, and yet we might decide against it. In a word, the relation from that time exists between the act, on the one hand, and the motive, purpose, impulse, or ideal, within the man himself, on the other. It would be perfectly conceivable, as we have intimated already, for a man to be guilty of a crime, and become so haunted with remorse as finally to give himself up to the punishment of the law, even though he had no religious scruples whatever. Con- science would act in such a case with reference to a man's conduct in relation to himself. We say that such a man has broken a law of his own being, that he has acted in defiance of his best self, or his true self.

Suppose the case of a man lost in a wilderness, with no hope whatever of escape for the rest of his life ; left there to spend all his days in solitude. What if such an individual, in the first despair over the outlook, should give himself over to a drunken debauch assuming he had the means for this at command.

In such a case, would conscience have anything to say, as a subjective experience? We should answer, I suppose, that it would depend on the man. Yes, beyond a doubt. But it is true is it not ? that after that debauch was over, the individual might go through an experience of intense shame. And why? He would have broken no command of the decalogue. He would have committed no offense against his fellow-men. Would it be the moral sense speaking there? Yes, I believe it would be precisely what we term conscience. But in such a case it would be a subjective relationship. The man had broken a law of his own being apart from any religious law he may also have defied. In a moment of despondency he had allowed him- self to relapse from his manhood to the state of the brute.