144 



CLEMENT C. J. WEBB, ESQ., ON 



sight, inattention or the like, as to the straightness or the 

 reverse of a particular line. It is not otherwise in the sphere 

 of morality. What the distinction between right and wrong is 

 or means, can only be known in instances. If anyone professes 

 not to understand it, we can only take some instance of each, 

 some act, for example, of loyalty and some act of treachery ; 

 and ask him whether he does not recognize a distinction 

 between them, even where materially the acts are indistinguish- 

 able, e.g., in two cases of the intentional dropping of a bomb by 

 an aviator on a munition factory, in the one case, however, by 

 an enemy aviator, in the other by one in the service of the 

 country whose munitions he attacks. Yet, while only in an 

 instance can the distinction of rio;ht and wrons^ in actions be 

 perceived, and while there is no way of coming at the knowledge 

 of the distinction except by perceiving it directly in some 

 instance — for it could never be explained to some one who did 

 not perceive it in some instance — nevertheless this does not 

 make it impossible to dispute whether this or that act is right 

 or wrong. 



We might, perhaps, use the mediaeval distinction of syndcresis 

 and conscientia to help ourselves in expressing this, and might 

 say that the infallibility or, rather (if I may so put it), the 

 incorrigibility of synderesis does not carry with it such infalli- 

 bility of conscientia as would make it impossible to dispute 

 whether a particular act is right or wrong : though in the last 

 resort there is no going beyond the direct perception of Tight- 

 ness and wrono-ness in an instance, and no external criterion of 

 rightness can be found, any more than there can be found an 

 external criterion of truth. In the last resort we must see for 

 ourselves that a proposition is true or an action right. We 

 must see it, I say, for ourselves ; but we can only see it for 

 ourselves because it is so independently of our seeing it. The 

 view of rightness or moral goodness which lays all the stress 

 on the subjective side, on the apprehension of it in abstraction 

 from the substance or nature of what is apprehended, is akin to 

 the " subjective idealism " which makes the existence of what 

 we perceive by means of the senses depend upon, or consist in, 

 our perception of it. Such positions tend towards pure scepticism 

 and are only saved from reaching it through a want of thorough- 

 ness in their advocates. Thus, in the sphere with which we are 

 now concerned, that of morality, we find people professing a 

 boundless " liberty of conscience," but secretly relying for what 

 they will admit as genuine " conscience," upon an unconfessed 

 or incompletely confessed authority. We shall see examples of 



