Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/82

Rh it is still impossible to see why there might not be. And the possibility is as fatal to the authority of bare conscience as the reality would be. In conscience alone, without some higher rational test, there is no ground evident wherefore its decisions might not have been other than they are. But what the moralist wants is such a distinction between right and wrong as does not depend upon any mere accident of reality, even upon the accidental existence of a moral sense. He wants to find the eternal ethical truth. We insist then that one of the first questions of the moralist must be, why conscience in any given case is right. Or, to put the case otherwise, ethical doctrine must tell us why, if the devil’s conscience approves of the devil’s acts, as it well may do, the devil’s conscience is nevertheless in the wrong.

The discussion has, we imagine, after all, a practical importance in a way not always sufficiently remembered. In the name of conscience many crimes have been done. In the name of conscience men condemn whatever tends towards true moral progress, so long as this new element is opposed to popular prejudice. In the name of conscience they kill the prophets, and stone every one that is sent unto them. In the name of conscience wars are waged, whole tribes are destroyed, whole peoples are oppressed. If conscience is the great practical guide in common life, conscience is also, in many great crises, the enemy of the new light. It is the sensitive and penetrating eye of the heart, but it is often blind before the coming day, even because it has been so useful to us in finding our way in the night.