THE CONSCIENCE. 



153 



sometimes in quarters which pass for being specially enlightened. 

 People in their contempt for what they call conventionality pay 

 no respect to the feelings which echo in the individual conscience 

 the traditional judgments of the community, treating them as 

 mere private prejudices, while they attempt so to remodel the 

 life of the community as to deprive these feelings of the 

 support afforded them by public opinion. 



Whether, then, we consider the antithesis of the individual 

 conscience and the public conscience, or judgment of the 

 community, or that of the individual conscience and the 

 objective good, we must be on our guard against ascribing to 

 the individual conscience by itself the value that belongs to 

 the whole moral fact. What is of supreme worth is the 

 conscientiously willed good : not wliat, if conscientiously willed, 

 vjould he good, but is actually unwilled or unconscientiously 

 willed — that is, willed but not willed because it is known to be 

 good : nor yet the bare form of conscientious volition ; but the 

 concrete conscience informed with knowledge — and therefore 

 not private — willing the real and objective good. 



Discussion. 



The Chairman : I am sure we all thank the author of the paper 

 for the skill and dialectical subtlety with which he has handled a 

 subject of undoubted difficulty, and the importance of which cannot, 

 I should say, be over-estimated. We find that Socrates followed 

 his good demon, as he called it, meaning by " demon " a being partly 

 divine and partly human whom he supposed to be resident within 

 him, whose function was to guide him from error and lead him into 

 truth. 



The importance of Conscience we know was recognized in the 

 Word of God, the Bible — all through the Divine Book. The great 

 Apostle, too, says how we should respect even what was supposed 

 to be a weak conscience, the possessor of which did not see the 

 whole truth about matters ; yet so long as he beheved his ideas to 

 be true, he was bound to follow them. We might, of course, try to 

 persuade him, and reason him into abandoning his weak conscience 

 and getting a strong one in its place ; but we were never to force 

 the weak conscience on any account. What did St. Paul aim at 1 

 He aimed at this : " Herein do I exercise myself to have a conscience 

 void of offence toward God and toward man." 



