Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/318

 CONSCIENCE

CONSCIENCE

but a habit in some sense active of itself, or a general tenilency, disposition, bias, weight, or virtuality. With this we might contrast Kant's pnre noumenal will, good apart from all determinedly good objects.

(4) Anti-Scholastic Schools. — The history of ethics outside the Scholastic domain, so far as it is antagonis- tic, has its extremes in Monism or Pantheism on the one side and in Materialism on the other.

(a) Spinoza is a type of the Pantheistic opposition. His views are erroneous inasmuch as they regard all things in the light of a fated necessity, with no free will in either God or man; no preventable evil in the natural course of things; no purposed good of crea- tion; no individual destiny or immortality for the re- sponsible agent : indeed no strict responsibility and no strict retribution by reward or punishment. On the otherhandmanyof Spinoza's sayings, if lifted into the theistic region, may be transformed into something noble. The theist, taking up Spinoza's phraseology in a converted sense, may, imder this new interpreta- tion, view all passionate action, all sinful choice, as an "inadequate idea of things", as "the preference of a part to the detriment of the whole", while all virtue is seen as an "adequate idea" taking in man's "full rela- tion to himself as a whole, to human society and to God". Again, Spinoza's amor Dei intellcctiialis be- comes finally, when duly corrected, the Beatific Vi- sion, after having been the darker understanding of God enjoyeil by holy men before death, who love all objects in reference to God. Spinoza was not an anti- nomian in conduct; he recommended and practised virtues. He was better than his philosophy on its bad side, and worse than his philosophy on its good side after it has been improved byChristian interpretation.

(b) Hobbes stands for ethics on a Materialistic basis. Tracing all hinnan action to self-love, he had to ex- plain the generous virtues as the more respectable ex- hibitions of that quality when modified by social life. He set various .schools of antagonistic thought devis- ing hypotheses to account for disintcrcsti'il action in man. The Cambridge Platonists luisalisfactcnily at- tacked him on the principle of their ejjonymous philos- opher, supposing the innate vornxara. to rule the em- pirical al<T8rifj.aTa by the aid of what Henry More called a " boniform faculty", which tasted " the sweet- ness and savour of virtue". This calling in of a spe- cial faculty had imitators outside the Platonic School; for example in Hutcheson, who had recourse to Divine " implantations" of benevolent disposition and moral sense, which remind us somewhat of synteresis as im- perfectly described by Alexander of Hales. A robust reliance on reason to prove ethical truth as it proved mathematical truths, by inspection and analysis, char- acterized the opposition which Dr. Samuel Clarke pre- sented to Hobbes. It was a fashion of the age to treat philosophy with mathematical rigour; but very differ- ent was the "geometrical ethics" of Spinoza, the nec- essarian, from that of Descartes, the libertarian, who thought that Goil's free will chose even the ultimate reasons of right and wrong and might have chosen otherwise. If Hobbes has his representatives in the ITtilitarians, the Cambridge Platonists have their rep- resentatives in more or less of the school of which T. H. Green is a leading light. A universal infinite mind seeks to realize itself finitely in each human mind or brain, which therefore must seek to free itself from the bondage of mere natural causality and rise to the lib- erty of the spirit, to a complete self-realization in the infinite Self and after its pattern. What this pattern ultimately is (Jreen cannot say; but he holds that our way towards it at present is through the recognized virtues of European civilization, together with the cul- tivation of science and art In the like spirit G. E. Moore finds the ascertainable objects that at present can be called "good in themselves" to be .social inter- course and a'sthetic delight.

(c) Kant may stand midway between the I'anthci.s-

tic and the purely Empirical ethics. On the one side he limited our knowledge, strictly so called, of things good to sense-experiences; but on the other he al- lowed a practical, regulative system of ideas lifting us up to God. Duty as referred to Divine commands was religion, not ethics: it was religion, not ethics, to regard moral precepts in the light of the commands of God. In ethics these were restricted to the autonom- ous aspect, that is, to the aspect of them under which the will of each man was its own legislator. Man, the noimienon, not the phenomenon, was his own law- giver and his own end so far as morality went: suty- thing beyond was outside ethics proper. Again, the objects prescribed as good or forbidden as bad did not enter in among the constituents of ethical quality: they were only extrinsic conditions. The whole of moralitj' intrinsically was in the good will as pure from all content or object of a definite kind, from all definite inclination to benevolence and as deriving its whole dignity from respect for the moral law simply as a moral law, self-imposed, and at the same time uni- versalized for all other autonomous individuals of the rational order. For each moral agent as noumenal willed that the maxim of his conduct should become a principle for all moral agents.

We have to be careful how in practice we impute consequences to men who hold false theories of con- science. In our historical sketch we have found Spinoza a necessarian or fatalist; but he believed in effort and exhortation as aids to good life. We have seen Kant assert the non-morality of Divine precept and of the objective fitness of things, but he found a place for both these elements in his system. Simi- larly Paulsen gives in the body of his work a mundane ethics quite unaffected by his metaphysical principles as stated in his preface to Book II. Luther logically might be inferred to be a thorough antinomian: he declared the human will to be enslaved, with a natural freedom only for civic duties; he taught a theory of justification which was in s[)ite of evil deeds; he called n;itiu-e radically corrupt and forcibly held captive by the lusts of the flesh; he regartled Divine grace as a due and necessary complement to human nature, which as constituted by mere body and soul was a nature depraved; his justification was by faith, not only without works, but even in spite of evil works which were not imputed. Nevertheless he asserted that the good tree of the faith-justified man must bring forth good works; he condemned vice most bit- terly, and exhorted men to virtue. Hence Protest- ants can depict a Luther simply the preacher of good, while Catholics may regard simply the preacher of evil. Luther has both sides.

V. CoN.SCIENCE IN ITS Pr.\CTIC.\L WORKING. — (1)

Tlie supremacy of conscience is a great theme of dis- course. " Were its might equal to its right ' ', says But- ler, " it would rule the world". With Kant we could say that conscience is autonomously supreme, if against Kant we added that thereby we meant only that every duty must be brought home to the individ- ual by his own individual conscience, and is to this ex- tent imposed by it ; so that even he who follows author- ity contrarj' to his own private judgment should do so on his own private conviction that the former has the better claim. If the Church stands between God and conscience, then in another sense also the conscience is between God and the Church. Unless a man is con- scientiously submissive to the Catholic Chiu'ch his sub- jection is not really a matter of inner morality but a mechanical obedience.

(2) Conscience as a matter of education and perfecti- bility. — As in all other concerns of education, so in the training of conscii-nce wo nuist \iso the .several means. As a check on individual caprice. es]i('cially in youth, we must con.sult the best living authoritiesandthcbe.st traditions of the p.ast. At the same time that we sire recipient our own active faculties must exortthem-