Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/78

Rh of various men, nations and races, are conflicting in their judgments of acts. This objection, worthless when urged against a well-founded theory of the moral consciousness, is fatal to any theory that makes morality dependent upon a particular emotional or intellectual “constitution” of human nature, that declares morality to be known by men through one faculty or “sense” of a peculiar character. If there are many consciences, each claiming rank as the true conscience, and all conflicting, then the choice among these can only be made on the ground of something else than a conscience.

The caprices of moral instinct are not exhausted when one has enumerated, as nowadays men often do, as many practices as one can find approved or demanded by the consciences of filthy savages. Among civilized men, yes, in our own hearts, each of us can find numberless conflicting and capricious estimates of actions, and it has only a psychological interest to study them in detail, or to try to reduce them to any semblance of principle. Such conscience as we have about common matters is too easily quieted; and, as a mere feeling, the conscience that can be called moral is not readily distinguishable in this, or in any other respect, from a mere sense of propriety, from a reverence for custom, or from the fear of committing an offense against etiquette. That certain blunders hurt us more than our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them is like our remorse for venial immorality, only more intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark. You ride using another man’s season-ticket, or you