Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/396

 380 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

moral sense or conscience, therefore, in the final stage of soul- development or spiritual culture, is what holds the soul to its high level, or what is goading the human creature on to reach or fulfil all the capacities of his nature, to live his life out as a member of the kingdom of souls. In an act of theft or mur- der, as much as in an act of drunken debauchery, he has broken the law of a spiritual kingdom. He has committed an offense against himself or his own soul.

Once more, it strikes me, we are in the realm of the unex- plainable in the story of conscience. Does the struggle for existence account for the self-loathing at the loss of one's self- respect? Can it show why a man should feel haunted, almost as with remorse, if on looking back over the past week he is aware that he has lived, but accomplished nothing? The gnawing sense of regret over wasted opportunity or a wasted life, over the con- sciousness of having possessed gifts one has not put to use, the disappointment at having lived on an inferior plane instead of rising to the full height of one's being and capacities this surely is a phase of the moral sense. But could the coming of all this have been anticipated according to the assumed laws of evolution? Humanly speaking, it just came! We fail to see just what utility function it serves in the economy of nature. On the intellectual side, as on the sympathy side, conscience would seem as yet in its appearance to belong to the sphere of mystery. Evolution does not explain a Sartor Resartus any more than it explains a Jean Valjean.

I speak of this as the final stage, not as if it were a stage which shows itself in all people, or even in every individual among civilized races. It is the direction toward which the evolution of conscience is tending. True, the remorse over an act of treachery, of theft, or of meanness toward a fellow-being, is probably greater than would ensue from surrendering one's self to a drunken debauch. In the last instance one may say that one has injured no one but one's self, and that no one but one's self is concerned. Yet I am not sure but that for a highly developed human being to be guilty of such an act of meanness or treachery to a fellow human being indicates a lesser relapse