Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/278

 realize the changes is scarcely possible. And here, where a felt discrepancy gradually sharpens itself into a perceived contradiction, we can retrace the general course, but can not recover the detailed experiences, each one of which told, and added to the whole.

From the first the incompatibility of pleasure in the good and in the bad must be in some way felt; and as the two sides by habit harden themselves and grow more connected, this feeling must become more definite. There must come more or less of a perception of the good as a whole, a more or less clear insight that this or that bad act was incompatible, and the disapproval of the superior must to a certain extent be reflected on as attaching to a class of acts. There are dawnings of the moral consciousness which never turn to day, and acts not quite moral, while hardly non-moral; but all that we can accomplish is to see clearly that the two sides are not perceived as such until perceived in their specific character, one against the other; and that morality proper does not begin until, being so apprehended, they are consciously made the principles of the particular acts.

Growth up to the appearance of the specific moral consciousness is thus not strictly moral, and up to this time, I think, we are not accountable. But, after this time, we must be considered so, although moral growth is still to some extent unconscious. To take the last first, it is quite certain that the awakening of the conscience does not mean its sudden application to the whole of life. It is only by slow degrees that our acts take spontaneously the colour of good and bad, and the process, owing to new material and fresh combinations of the old, remains incomplete to the end of our days. For all that, we are responsible; and if theory must fix some point at which imputation begins, it can not be elsewhere than here. From this time we are a will which knows itself as good and bad, and knows that the good has exclusive claim. We have with full consciousness identified ourselves with good and evil; and from that twofold identification of the will, which begins a new life, and is no transitory accident but a standing self, we are bound to conclude that our particular acts now proceed. The burden of proving the contrary lies in all cases upon ourselves; and, to escape imputation of evil or good, we must show, by