CONSCIENCE AND MORALITY 161 



human interests in this world. A religion which rejects 

 as worthless all worldly aims, and makes freedom from 

 their influence the supreme end of conduct, will arrange 

 its moral qualities in an order which differs materially from 

 that which is given them by the instinctive reactions of the 

 conscience ; and the difference will, perhaps, be even greater 

 with a religion which makes worldly pleasures its highest 

 good. The compassion which a Dante may exhibit for 

 some of the objects of divine justice will not be greater 

 than his repugnance to the rewards of a Muhammadan 

 paradise. 



The same considerations hold good of all attempts to 

 deduce practical rules of conduct from metaphysical or 

 scientific premises. No a priori system, whether it be of 

 religion or of philosophy, can be constructed, which will 

 not contradict, in some particulars at least, the current 

 morality of its time. When, as some modern philosophers 

 do, it substitutes rules of prudence for rules of conscience, 

 it cuts away the whole growth of morality at its roots. 



One of the commonest cases of conflict is when a man, 

 at the commencement of his intellectual activity, debates 

 whether he should give free rein to his speculations or 

 submit them to the control of his religion. If, with Pascal, 

 he regards it as a wager, in which the stakes are a short 

 life of doubtful happiness on one side, and an eternity of 

 beatitude on the other, the question is purely prudential. 

 No moral considerations of any kind are engaged on either 

 side. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that had the 

 question been as he stated it it would never have arisen. 

 That it should have been asked is due to the action of the 

 conscience, which commands a man to make a free use of 

 his faculties. Against this moral good will be arrayed 

 another the command of the conscience to respect the 

 assurance of religion. We then have a special case of the 

 commonest of all moral conflicts that between obedience 

 and self-assertion. There will be no moral conflict when 

 the internal command to employ our faculties is pitted 

 against the fear of consequences. Hope and fear create 



