CONSCIENCE AND MORALITY 163 



its own citizens the state pays no consideration to the 

 individual conscience, or to the collective conscience of any 

 small subordinate group. The duty of a state to enforce 

 education, to call out its citizens for war, or to levy taxes 

 from them, whatever their private morality may say, is 

 never disputed. There are, it is true, exceptions, as when 

 a law contains a conscience clause ; but they are few. 

 The scruples for which allowance is made are usually of 

 a religious rather than a strictly ethical character, and the 

 deference paid by the collective to the individual conscience 

 is often, as in the case of the Vaccination Act, of doubtful 

 advantage even to those who avail themselves of it. This 

 indifference to private views of morality is fully justified. 

 No state could long subsist which did not exercise some 

 control over the vagaries of the individual conscience, 

 or which showed an exclusive or unfair deference to the 

 separate collective conscience of any group of its citizens, 

 whether they lived in Whitechapel or in Mayfair. Neither 

 the individual nor society can yield, or even compromise 

 with, the sanction of its conscientious or moral principles ; 

 and the strongest, that is to say the community, must 

 prevail. 



The right of the community to coerce the individual 

 conscience is so liable to abuse and, when misunderstood, 

 so dangerous, that it requires to be very strictly defined. 

 Briefly, there can be no right of this kind, unless it is also 

 a duty. Disapproval of the conduct or opinions of others 

 does not constitute a right to interfere, unless it is plainly 

 recognized that the community ought to interfere, and that 

 abstention is a neglect of duty. No mere antipathy, 

 however strong, deserves to be listened to. And it will 

 be incumbent on the community, before it acknowledges 

 the exercise of this right to be its duty, to satisfy itself 

 that its action is not really dictated by motives of expedience, 

 or even of religion. To interfere with a man in the dis 

 charge of what he may regard as his duty is not held to be 

 justified by any considerations of expedience, however 

 wide their range may be, but only by a conflicting duty, 



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