Let us see how it answers our question. Why do we make moral distinctions? Because we have the power of making such judgments. Man possesses a natural faculty, a peculiar moral endowment, a conscience, which immediately enables him to distinguish between right and wrong. Its deliverances are absolutely certain and necessary, as self-evident as the truth that twice two is four, as immediate and eternal as the axioms of geometry. You cannot and need not prove that twice two is four, you cannot and need not prove that stealing is wrong. It is as absurd to doubt the one fact as it is to doubt the other. And whence did man obtain this wonderful power, you ask? Well, it is an inborn faculty, which God has given us.

(1) Let us consider a few representatives of this view,1 and note how it is modified in the course of time. And, first, let us turn to the early Christian thinkers.2 "How," Chrysostom3 asks the heathen,1 "did your lawgivers happen to give so many laws on murder, marriage, wills, etc.? The later ones have perhaps been taught by their predecessors, but how did these learn of them? How else than through conscience, the law which God originally implanted in human nature?" "There is in our souls," says Pelagius,5

1 In the following expositions I have tried, as far as possible, to state the different authors' views in their own language.

2 See Gass, Die Lehre vom Gewissen.

8 Died 407.

4 Adv. pop. Antioch., Homil. 12.

5 A contemporary of St. Augustine.

66

"a certain natural holiness, as it were, which presides over the citadel of the mind, a judgment of good and evil."1 Augustine 2 Augustine2 declares that there are "in the natural faculty of judgment certain rules and seeds of virtue, which are both true and incommunicable."

But, it might be asked, if there is such an absolute faculty, if the dictates of this conscience or the moral truths engraven on the mind are so certain and universal, how comes it that so many mistakes are made, and so many differences exist in action? In obeying the so-called inner voice the individual may still fall into error. To escape this troublesome modified the view just set

problem the Schoolmen

forth in an ingenious way. I may pronounce judgment that a particular act is right or wrong. The faculty which enables me to do this is the conscience (conscientia, συνείδησις). The judgment may be false, for the particular act which it pronounces to be right or wrong may be the opposite. But I have another faculty, the faculty which tells me in general that all wrong must be avoided, that evil must not be done. This faculty, called the synteresis or synderesis (ovvdépeσis),3 cannot err, it is infallible, inextinguishable. It is the spark of reason or truth which burns even in the souls of the damned. When we come to apply this truth to particular

1 Epist. ad Demetr., chap. iv, p. 25.

2 354-430.

8 The spelling and derivation of the word are in dispute. See Archiv f. G. d. Ph., Vol. X, number 4.

cases and seek to discover what particular deeds should be avoided, we exercise the conscience and may err. To quote from Bonaventura :1 "For God has endowed us with a twofold righteousness, one for judging correctly, and this is the righteousness of conscience, and one for willing correctly, and that is the righteousness of the synderesis, whose function it is to warn against (remurmurare) the evil and to prompt to goodness."2 Antoninus of Florence regards the synderesis as a natural habit or endowment, a natural light, which tends to keep man from doing wrong by warning him against sin and inclining him to the good. It is a simple principle, dealing with general laws, sinless and inextinguishable, while the conscience is a faculty or an activity which concerns itself with the particular and is, therefore, subject to error and illusion. "The human mind makes a certain syllogism, as it were, for which the synderesis furnishes the major premise: All evil is to be avoided. But a superior reason assumes the minor premise of this syllogism, saying, Adultery is an evil because it is prohibited by God, while an inferior reason says, Adultery is

1 1221–1274. Breviloquium, Part II, chap. ii.

2 Duplicem enim indidit (Deus) rectitudinem ipsi naturæ, videlicet unam ad recte judicandum, et hæc est rectitudo conscientiæ; aliam, ad recte volendum, et hæc est rectitudo synderesis, cujus est remurmurare contra malum et stimulare ad bonum.

3 1389-1459.

4 Synderesis est quidam connaturalis habitus sive connaturale lumen, cujus actus vel officium est, hominem retrahere a malo murmurando contra peccatum et inclinare ad bonum.

an evil because it is unjust, or because it is dishonest. But conscience draws the conclusion from the above premises: Therefore adultery is to be avoided."1

or reason.

(2) We find similar views expressed by modern thinkers. Ralph Cudworth2 regards knowledge as the product of an independent activity of the soul, "The intellection consists in the application of a given pattern thought, a ready-made category, to the phenomena and objects presented by experience. These categories or notions are a priori; they are the constant reflections of the Universal Reason, of God's mind." But they are not merely objects and products of the intellect, they form the nature or essence of things. All men have the same fundamental ideas. What is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. Among the truths which reason reveals to us are moral truths, which, like mathematical propositions, are absolute and eternal. But the soul is not a mere passive and receptive thing which has no innate active principles of its own. Good and evil, intuitive intellectual

1 Fit in animo vel in mente hominis quasi quidam syllogismus, cujus majorem præmittit synderesis dicens, omne malum esse vitandum. Minorem vero hujus syllogismi assumit ratio superior, dicens adulterium esse malum, quia prohibitum est a Deo, ratio vero inferior dicit, adulterium esse malum, quia vel est injustum vel quia est inhonestum. Conscientia vero infert conclusionem dicens et concludens ex supradictis, ergo adulterium est vitandum.

2 1617-1688. The title of Cudworth's book is characteristic of his standpoint: Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality.Selections in Selby-Bigge's British Moralists, Vol. II.

categories, convey more than knowledge, and are attended by an authority pleading with the will to move in a determinate direction. Moreover, the truths of mathematics and morals are as binding on God as they are on us; he must think and act like all rational beings.1

(3) Samuel Clarke2 teaches that there are eternal and necessary differences and relations of things. The human differences are as obvious as the various sizes of physical objects, the fitness of actions and characters as obvious as the propositions of numbers and geometrical figures. Hence the moral truths, like the mathematical truths, belong to the sphere of eternal relations. The reason, divine and human, perceives these eternal differences and relations as they are. And just as no one can refuse assent to a correct mathematical proof, no one who understands the subject can refuse assent to moral propositions. "So far as men are conscious of what is right and wrong, so far they are under obligation to act accordingly." It is contrary to reason, contrary to the eternal order of nature, to do wrong. Indeed, it is as absurd as to try to make darkness out of light, sweet out of bitter. To deny that I should do for another what he in the like case

1 For Cudworth, see especially Martineau, Types, Vol. II, Bk. II; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik; Sidgwick, History of Ethics.

2 1675-1729. Discourse concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion. - Selections from Clarke's ethical writings in Selby-Bigge's British Moralists, Vol. II.

8 Op. cit., pp. 184 ff.

D