ing and calling them forth in an unusual degree. The conscientious man, one in whom conscience finds full activity, cannot be otherwise than the thoughtful, reflective man. The action of conscience is, indeed, a second knowing, and must be preceded, therefore, by a first knowing. Right is not perceived in actions as actions, but in them as rational actions; that is, as springing from certain motives and leading to certain consequences. As it is this rational element alone that makes them capable of the quality, right, and determines in each given instance its presence or absence, the perception, the intuitive action of conscience, must be preceded by a thorough inquiry into the motives and results of action before it can safely pronounce a verdict. This investigation is not the very act of conscience, but furnishes the knowledge preliminary thereto; and, as it extends over the whole field of human conduct, over all the direct and indirect consequences of action, the theories and experiences of individual and social well-being, of present and future, of physical and spiritual good, conscience necessarily calls forth and greatly quickens the other intellectual faculties. Selfinterest even is not so broad, persistent, and exacting in its inquiries as the fully aroused conscience. For the mind to fall short of faithfulness in the inquiries it prosecutes at the bidding of conscience is not loss merely, but sin. To neglect another's interest is equally fatal as the neglect of one's own. It is the conscience, above all faculties, which puts every kind and form of knowledge into immediate use in solving those problems of private and public good with which it is constantly compelled to busy itself. The conscientious mind is the most thorough, painstaking, and scrutinizing of all minds, since every faculty becomes at once and perfectly instrumental. Even more intimate is the relation of conscience to the will. The presence of the perception of right implies, calls for, and helps to give, the concomitant power of choice. It implies it, since no action is capable of a moral quality that is not free. Freedom is the antecedent condition without which no course of action comes under the supervision of conscience. No one, therefore, could use this perception as regards his own or another's conduct, except as the power of choice had preceded it. The moral law also calls for freedom, since it waits for adoption, and furnishes by the blessings attendant thereon a compensation for all the risks of liberty, for all the evils of sin. Still further, this perception of right in some measure gives liberty, or rather, the conditions of choice. Between things like in kind there is no opportunity for the exercise of choice. Five dollars cannot be chosen instead of ten dollars, considered simply as so much purchasing power, as commanding, the first, half, the second, twice, the pleasures of the other. To take the five in place of the ten would be caprice, not liberty. Thus all things which can be brought to the simple standard of pleasure, of sensibility gratified, admit of definite comparison, and therein exclude freedom. There is no possible motive for accepting the less in room of the greater pleasure, considered simply as a pleasure. A power to do this would be one of the most worthless and fortuitous of faculties. No wonder that those who accept happiness as the only aim of action usually deny true liberty to the will. Right, on the other hand, is able to present to the choice a real alternative. We may choose those actions which contain it, an indulgence of those affections which give play to it, as opposed to any and every other form of enjoyment. The two objects compared can no longer be brought to a common standard, and there pronounced upon as greater or less, thereby excluding a choice between them. We cannot compare odors by length nor colors by weight; no more can we measure obligation on the scale of the intensity of organic impression the degree and duration of the accompanying pleasure. Right remains incomparable with all other things, unmeasured by them, unexpressed in them, and thus open to choice as opposed to less or more of them. The moral quality of a feeling separates it utterly from any appetitive and passionate pleasure, and enables it to present a true, a rational alternative of choice to any and every form of indulgence. Thus right and liberty are reciprocally conditions of each other; each nugatory without the other, and together constituting the very centre and framework of our spiritual manhood. It is through this connection with the will that conscience becomes the strength and support of character. A yielding to appetite and passion is, indeed, a surrender of the will. The power of choice is laid aside, and the mind is left the sport of impulses, carried whithersoever these bear it. Only is will, true choice, called forth when the moral alternative is presented. Herein is the true, the only exercise of liberty, and the conscience consolidates character, erects and guides the manhood, because it gives just and constant discipline to the will, and confers on choice the regency of the impulses. Only on condition of taking wisdom and virtue to its counsels can the will itself reign; otherwise its dominion is quickly lost amid the clamor of fitful appetites, dominant passions, and desires fortified by habit. The true foundations of strength, therefore, are found in the conscience. A fourth relation of conscience is to our physical faculties. There is the semblance, and only the semblance, of human in brute action. Instincts and appetites, gauged with precision to the wants of the animal, constitute almost exclusively its impelling and governing powers. There is left little demand or play for reasoning. The laws of association do, indeed, seem to hold in the brute mind, enabling it to receive a limited measure of instruction, to form habits, and to present the appearance of reflection and judgment where these are not present. An oversight of the effects of this primary and simple law of mental phenomena leads to some strange misinterpretations and exaltation of the actions of animals. The fact that a dog, punished for an act, manifests on its repetition a sense of fear, skulking from the presence of his master, is made the ground on which to ascribe to it a sense of guilt with the shame consequent thereon. We might as well refer fear to the aspen, because its leaves tremble. The incitements and checks of the animal organism are mainly placed in itself, acting, if not mechanically yet spontaneously, for the government of its life. When, then, we find in man a moral law, with the power of choice to make it effective, we expect to see it superseding this pupilage of instincts and balanced appetites, and claiming for itself that guidance, that control, which is its primary function. There is, therefore, attendant on conscience a loss of instincts, a limitation of the organic guidance of appetite, the opportunity, and thus the necessity, of inquiring into and enforcing the laws of individual and social life. This regal power of conscience enters our constitution with displacement and modification of those blinder and more mechanical forces which hold sway in lower life. But the immediate physical consequences of moral power are not less important than these its antecedent conditions. Habits are spoken of as constituting a second nature. The expression is apt, not merely as showing their force, but also their relation to ourselves. They are indeed a second nature. They are the settling down of government into fixed authoritative forms. By them we pass from an incipient to a completed, from a germinant to a developed, state. They take action out from the constant arbitrament of choice, from under the judicial decision of judgment and conscience, and, with an organic power like that of precedent, cause it to assume a constant, reliable form. The judgments of the mind, the lines of action it accepts, are thus issuing physically in those habits which assume the organic control of a second nature, not easily modified or resisted. We may thus say that conscience is making for us a new physical manhood, better or worse than our first nature, according as its authority is the lapse and defeat, or the victory of wisdom. If we add to this voluntary nature and increasing hold of habit the belief that the spirit is ultimately to receive new physical habiliments in keeping with its character and power, we arrive at the conclusion that the body that is here given us, is but a loaned capital, does but afford standing, by means of which our truer selves, our moral and voluntary faculties, win and shape the instruments of a fuller, more enduring life. The body is said to outgrow disease. The purified spirit outgrows the body in its evils and limitations, and is ready by its own action under divine law for more perfect physical faculties. The life of the individual is not so short but that something of this tendency is often, in spite of physical decay, revealed; while a truly moral community, expounding and enforcing with thorough and conscientious inquiry all God's laws of life, would, in a succession of generations, exhibit physical results even in this limited field, revealing the close dependence of the lower on the higher. Nor are the external relations of conscience less important than those now presented. From it arises that sense of justice which is the chief support of law. The adjective and the noun, just and justice, have a broader and a more limited meaning. In the first, they signify that which is equal, fit, right, and are essentially synonyms with right and righteousness. Thus the righteousness and the justice of God are spoken of as interchangeable ideas, and when the second term is felt to be somewhat more limited in its application, the nature and extent of the restriction are often not clearly seen. If we would assign each class of words a definite office, we shall be able to do it only in their connection with law. In addition to its scientific use, by which it signifies an order of action among natural forces, law has two allied but diverse meanings in morals. The law of conscience and the law of God have this in common, that each indicates and enjoins a certain line of action; and this difference, that the one makes no mention of penalties, and that the other is enforced by penalties and rewards, directly mentioned or tacitly assumed. In the stricter sense, law is a command enforced by sanctions; in the broader sense, a simple command, though left only to intrinsic rightfulness and natural results for its exposition and authority. Righteousness is the obedience of law in its broad, moral sense. Justice pertains to the establishment and enforcement of wise law in its more restricted, its governmental sense. |