158 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



truth may refuse to pronounce the conventional lies which 

 are required by social usage. In these, and all other similar 

 cases, the primacy of the conscience is, for the individual 

 himself, absolute. The only alternative is between that and 

 prudence, and the claims of prudence have already been 

 disposed of. 



This statement, may, perhaps, appear to be too bald and 

 unconditional. It may be objected : surely a man should 

 pay some attention to the general moral feelings of the 

 society he lives in ; he ought not to be indifferent to the 

 opinions of his fellows. The explanation will be found 

 in the terms * should and ought . All moral obligation 

 is personal, and exerted by the individual s own conscience. 

 The moral feelings of others may impose compulsion, but 

 can never create a sense of moral obligation. What is really 

 meant by these objections is, that the individual conscience 

 is imperfect when it does not share the impulses of 

 public opinion. When men act in concert in any kind of 

 society or state, the ordinary commands of the individual 

 conscience are supplemented by an additional moral interest, 

 to wit, the maintenance of that society or state. In the 

 case of objective morality this assumes a paramount im 

 portance ; it may often be right for an individual to accept 

 his own extinction ; for the state it can never be right. 

 As the public conscience is nothing but a segment of the 

 separate conscience of each individual, the same principle 

 should find a place in each individual conscience, and when, 

 for example, the dictate not to lie comes into conflict with 

 the dictate to observe certain social conventions, and in 

 all other similar cases of conflict, the dispute is not between 

 an external and an internal impulse, but between two 

 internal impulses. It must be treated as an ordinary case 

 of conflict of moral goods. When, however, after ripe 

 deliberation, and a careful exclusion of all personal motives, 

 such as pride and perversity, the individual conscience 

 still demands that another course should be followed, the 

 claims of the collective conscience, however plain and urgent, 

 have no validity. Duty and the sense of obligation can 



