146 CONSCIOUSNESS 



in a mascot. Nay further, unreasonable in- 

 ferences may seriously affect the course of 

 politics : should prices rise there are multitudes 

 of voters who will hold the ministry in office to 

 blame. Nor is science itself quite free from the 

 illusion that happenings which transcend our 

 powers of conception can be strung together by 

 reason as cause and effect. 



III. Unhappiness. We enter here upon the 

 workings of Conscience, that influence which, 

 through unhappiness or the threat of unhappi- 

 ness controls all but the most lawless of men. 

 Conscience appears to us in the guise of a judicial 

 authority which commends or reproves us accord- 

 ing as we obey or disobey certain rules of conduct 

 or laws it may be human, or divine. But no rule 

 or law affects our conscience unless it has been 

 adopted by our will, either as an original resolu- 

 tion of our own or on the authority of the society 

 to which we belong. A Mohammedan does not 

 repent of bigamy or a soldier of looting. The 

 prick of conscience which leads to repentance, 

 results, then, from a failure of the will to assert 

 itself a failure which our consciousness glaringly 

 portrays ; it is unhappiness that arises from the 

 dissatisfaction of the will, which resembles our 

 other impulses in causing us distress if its cravings 

 are unfulfilled. This feeling has reinforced very 

 potently the efforts of authorities, whether religi- 

 ous or civil, to restrain human conduct from 

 disorder which would break up society. But, 

 however useful to the community, repentance is 

 unhappiness to the individual: to one of sensi- 

 tive character it may indeed be torturing anguish. 



Misery rather than unhappiness is the lot of 

 those who are afflicted with imperious impulses 

 that conscious will impels them not only to 



