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CLEMENT C. J. WEBB, ESQ., M.A., ON 



legendary past. But the siibstauce of the appeal to antiquity is 

 independent of its legendary setting. It is, in fact, an appeal to 

 the tradition of the society as a living thing, with a tendency to 

 grow in a definite direction. It is implied in the appeal that to 

 the unsophisticated conscience the congruity of the new teach- 

 ing or reformed practice with what it already recognizes as good, 

 will he apparent ; to reject it would involve self -sophistication. 

 Hence the reformer's conscience, though it may be solitary in 

 the sense that something has dawned upon it which has as yet 

 dawned on no one else's, is yet not properly called " private." A 

 really private revelation to an individual conscience, there could 

 be no sin in others rejecting. A great saint or reformer may be 

 the first to perceive a moral truth, just as a great man of science 

 may be the first to make a discovery in nature. Either may 

 have a knowledge which no one else shares ; but the knowledge 

 is not on that account " private." Others would share it did they 

 use their own reason as faithfully ; and he who has it makes 

 haste to communicate it, and makes no doubt of its communi- 

 cable, that is, its public character. 



The worship of the ''private conscience," as such, is thus 

 quite irrational. But it may, notwithstanding, be an important 

 principle that everyone's conscience should be equally respected, 

 not because everyone's is equally likely to be right, but because 

 of the danger of making a general rule as to whose conscience 

 is to be preferred to his neighbour's. It may be right for the 

 community to interfere as little as possible, on the same principle 

 as that on which some actions which we think had better not 

 be done we yet also think had better not be forbidden or 

 punished by law. But nobody thinks thus of all actions, and 

 in the case of Conscience it is plainly not reasonable to extend 

 the rule of acquiescence to consciences which object to the 

 performance of duties on the discharge of which by its 

 members the very existence of the community depends. We 

 may recognize that the danger of what is called in a general 

 way " Socialism " lies in the direction of impressing the 

 judgment of the community on the individual, and so losing 

 the progressive impulse supplied by individual criticism — not 

 private criticism (except in the sense of criticism by one who 

 is not an official), but criticism brought into the public stock. 

 The opposite danger is that of what is sometimes called laissez 

 faire. Here the common ideal is not recognized ; the com- 

 munity's judgment is lost, and along with it the proper starting 

 point of the individual conscience. It is not impossible for 

 both dangers to be combined. One finds such a combination 



