Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/103

Rh are reached by a sort of intuition; they are formed by a process essentially inexact. The moral faculty is subject to growth and change, but conscience is remarkably steady and regular. To explain this regularity and permanence of moral judgments, we must suppose a permanent moral structure. The permanent factor and central fact of moral experience is the regulation of conduct by a moral ideal, which is, specifically, an image of the sort of man each person thinks he ought to be. The ideal is personal, and the product of desire. As in all cases of desire, so here we form the image of ourselves as acting for the best; but this image, rendered permanent by repetition and habit, becomes the moral ideal. A man is said to have 'no conscience' when he has a lack of moral scruple on certain points of conduct. This moral deficiency has its origin in a low social environment. When we know the right and will not do it, we 'disobey conscience.' A man has a 'tender conscience' who is spontaneous in the habit of testing his conduct by comparing it with his ideal, and of making sure that the ideal itself is sound by comparing its elements with one another. The man of opposite character is a 'hardened sinner.' One who is conscious of having violated the moral ideal, but who has not yet absolutely abandoned it, is said to be 'conscience-stricken,' to be 'remorseful' when this consciousness is very acute, and 'penitent' when there is a thoroughgoing renunciation of evil courses and a resolution to return to the ideal. These feelings imply a fairly high grade of moral development; they are to be distinguished from a 'bad' or 'guilty conscience' which contains merely a sense of shame and of liability to punishment, but no self-reproach or resolution to do good.

The method of universalistic hedonism is the most reliable and effective—the most genuinely practical—method for the guidance of private conduct, of moral teachers, and of politicians. The impossibility of a science of hedonic calculation does not affect the situation, because we are not to take account of every action, but of general lines of conduct, making due allowances for disparities in human nature and men's environment. Hedonic instruction will aim to show how modes of conduct are or are not hedonically justifiable. The instruction will have a moralizing effect, because men will possess clearer insight into the consequences of actions. This insight will become morally effective, in virtue of our sympathetic and social nature.

The cause of morality is indissolubly bound up with that of science, but this does not mean that morality is bound by physical laws exclusively. As