Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/317

 CONSCIENCE

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CONSCIENCE

{tlio irascible), and tA Xo7ik6>' (the rational), uses the fourth animal, the eagle, to represent what he calls ffiim-Zipricn^. The last, according to the texts em- ployed by him to describe it, is a supernatural knowl- etlge: it is the Spirit Who groans in man (Rom., viii, 26), the Spirit who alone knows what is in man (I Cor., ii, in. till' Spirit who with the body and the soul forms the Pauline trichotomy of I The.ss., v, 23. Alexander of Hales neglects this limitation to the supernatural, and takes sjTiteresis as neither a poimtia alone, nor a habitus alone, but a jiotcntia hdhitualis, something na- tive, es,sential. indestructible in the soul, yet liable to be obscured and baffled. It resides both in the intelli- gence and in the will: it is identified with conscience, not indeed on its lower side, as it is deliberative and makes concrete applications, but on its higher side as it is wholly general in principle, intuitive, a lunien in- natum in the intellect and a native inclination to good in the will, voluntas naluralis non deliheratira (.Simima Theol., Pt. II, QQ. lxxi-lxx^^i). St. Bonaventure, the pupil, follows on the same lines in his "Commentarium in II Sent." (dist: xxxix), with the difference that he locates the synteresis as rotor ci ]wndus in the will only, distinguishing it from the conscience in the practical intellect, which he calls an innate habit — ''rationale iudicatorium, habitus cognoscitivus moralium princi- piorimi'' — "a rational judgment, a habit cognoscitive of moral principles". Unlike Alexander he retains the name conscience for descent to particulars: " con- scicnlia non solimi consist it in imiversali sed etiam de- scendit ad particulfiriu ilclibcratira" — "conscience not only consists in the universal but also descends to de- liberative particulars". As regards general principles in the conscience, the habits are innate: while as re-

fards particular applications, they are acquired (II ent., dist xxxix. art. 1, Q. ii).

As forming a transition from the Franciscan to the Dominican School we may take one whom the Servite Order can at least claim as a great patron, though he seems not to have joined their body, Henrj- of Ghent. He places conscience in the intellect, not in the affec- tive part — "non ad afTectivam pertinef — by which the Scholastics meant generally the will without special reference to feeling or emotion as distinguished in the modern .sen.se from will. While Nicholas of Cusa de- scribed the Divine ilhmiination as acting in blind-born man (virtus illuminati coecinati qui per fidem visum acquirit). Henrj' of Ghent required only assistances to human sight. Therefore he supposed: (a) an influrnlin gcnfralis Dei to apprehend concrete ob- jects and to generalize thence ideas and principles; (b) a light of faith; (c) a lumen speciale wherewith was known the sincera el limpida Veritas rcrum by chosen men only, who saw things in their Divine exemplars but not God Himself; (d) the lumen gloria to see God. For our purpose we specially note this: "conscientia ad partem anima> cognitivam non pcrtinet, sed ad alfectivam" — "conscience belongs not to the cognitive part of the mind, but to the affec- tive" (Quodlibet., I, xviii). St. Thomas, leading the Dominicans, places sjTiteresis not in the will but in the intellect, and he applies the term ronxcienee to the con- crete determinations of the general principle which the SjTiteresis furnishes: "By conscience the knowledge given through synteresis is applied to particular ac- tions". ("De Verit.", Q. xvii, a. 2. Cf. "Summa Theol.", Q. l.xxix, a. 13; "III Sent.", dist. xiv, a. 1, Q. ii; "Contra Gent.", II, .59.) Albertus agrees with St. Thomas in assigning to the intellect the sjTiteresis, which he unfortunatelj- derives from si/n and hwrere (h;prens in aliquo) (Summa Theol., Pit. II, Q. xcix, memb.2, 3; Summa de Creaturis, Pt. II,Q. IxLx, a. 1). Yet he does not deny all place to the will: "Est ra- tionis practice. . . non sine voluntate naturali, sed nihil est voluntatis deliberativa- (Summa Theol., Pt. II, Q. xcix, memb. I). The preference of the Francis- can School for the prominence of will, and the prefer-

ence of the Thomistic School for the prominence of in- tellect is characteristic. (See Scotus, IV Sent., dist. xli.x, Q. iv.) Often this preference is less significant than it seems. Fouillee, the great defender of the idie force — idea as the active principle — allows in a controversy with Spencer that feeling and will may be involved in the idea. Having shown how Scholasti- cism began its research uito conscience as a fi.xed termi- nology, we must leave the matter there, adding only three heads under which occasion was given for serious errors outside the Catholic tradition: —

(a) While St. Augustine did excellent service in de- velojiing the doctrine of grace, he never so clearly defined the exact character of the supernatural as to approach the precision which was given through the condemnation of propositions taught bj' Baius and Jan- senius ; and in consequence his doctrine of original sin remained un.satisfactory. When .\lexander of Hales, without distinction of natural and supernatural, in- troduced among the Scholastics the words of St. Jerome about sj-nteresis as scintilla conscientia, and called it lumen innntum, he helped to perpetuate the Augustinian obscuritj-.

(b) As regards the intellect, several Scholastics in- clined to the .\rabian doctrine of intcllectus agcns, or to the Aristotelean doctrine of the Divine i-oCs higher than the human .soul and not perishable with it. Roger Bacon called the intcllectus agcns a distinct substance. Allied with tliis went Exemplarism, or the doctrine of archetvpic ideas and the supposed knowledge of things in these Divine ideas. [Compare the TrpoX^iZ-cn €n<)>vToi of the Stoics, which were universals, Koival fvvoiai (Zeller, Stoics, eh. vi)]. Henry of Ghent distin- guished in man a double knowledge : " primum exem- plar rei est species eius universalis causataare: secun- dimi est ars divina, continens rerum ideales rationes" — " the first exemplar of a thing is universal species of it caused bj' the thing: the second is the Divine Art containing the ideal reasons (rationes) of things" (Theol., I, 2, n. 1.5). Of the former he says: "per tale exemplar acquisitum certa et infallibilis notitia veri- tatis est omnino impossibilis" — "through such an ac- quired exemplar, certain and infallible knowledge of truth is utterlj- impossible" (n. 17); and of the latter : "illisoh certam veritatem valent agnoscere qui earn in exemplar! (a'terno) valent aspicere, quod non omnes valent" — "thej' alone can know certain truth who can behold it in the (eternal) exemjilar, which not all can do" (I, 1, n. 2(5). The perplexity was further in- creased when some, with Occam, asserted a confused intuition of things singular as opposed to the clearer idea got by the process of abstraction: "Cognitio sin- gularis abstractiva praesupponit intuitivam ejusdem objecti" — "abstractive cognition of a singular presup- poses intuitive cognition of the same object" (Quod- lib., I, Q. xiii). Scotus also has taught the confused intuition of the singulars. Here was much occasion for perplexity on the intellectual side, about the knowledge of general principles in ethics and their ap- plication when the priority of the general to the par- ticular was in question.

(c) The w-ill also was a source of obscurity. Des- cartes supposed the free will of God to have deter- mined what for conscience was to be right and what wrong, and he placed the act of volition in an affirma- tion of the judgment. Scotus did not go thus far, but some Scotists exaggerated the determining power of Divine will, especially so as to leave it to the choice of God indefinitelj- to enlarge a creature's natural facul- ties in a way that made it haril to distinguish the nat- ural from the supernatural. Ccnmected with the phil- osophy of the will in matters of conscience is another statement open to controversy, namelj', that the will can tend to any good object in p.articular only by rea- son of its imiversal tendency to the good. This is what Alexander of Hales means by .sj-nteresis as it exi.sts in the will, when he says that it is not an inactive habit