versally recognized as right. Some moralists grant the truth of this statement, but still maintain that conscience is innate. It is true, they declare, that the moral judgments of mankind diverge, that one age or tribe may approve of what another condemns. But all times and peoples agree that some form of conduct is better, higher, nobler than another, that right is better than wrong, that we bow down before authority. This is practically the theory advocated by the Schoolmen,1 who held that we have an innate faculty, the synderesis, which tells us that the right ought to be done and the wrong avoided.

There is, however, no such faculty as the one spoken of here. The proposition, The right ought to be done and the wrong avoided, is, like all general statements of the kind, the result of abstraction. We find by experience that many particular acts are accompanied in consciousness by feelings of obligation and approval, and that others are associated with feelings of disapproval and deterrence. We bring these acts under general heads, and call the former right, the latter wrong. To say that right acts ought to be performed and wrong ones avoided, simply means that certain forms of conduct arouse feelings of obligation and approval, and others the reverse. The proposition, therefore, that we ought to do the right and refrain from the wrong, is a general expression of the fact that we feel obliged to perform certain actions and to refrain from 1 See chap. ii, § 3 (1).

others; it is a universal proposition, an inference drawn from the facts of experience, not an a priori judgment of the reason.

(4) Even if it were true that certain moral judgments were universally accepted, this would not necessarily prove them to be innate. They might be the products of universally prevalent conditions.

(5) Nor can we prove the innateness of conscience from "the self-evidence and necessity" of some of its deliverances. It is true that such propositions as Stealing is wrong, Murder is wrong, Honesty is right, etc., seem necessary and self-evident to us children of the nineteenth century. But they may be satisfactorily explained without our having recourse to the doctrine of nativism, which is, after all, merely a confession of ignorance. As we saw before, the ideas of certain acts, say of murder and self-sacrifice, are accompanied in consciousness by peculiar feelings called moral feelings, feelings which are lacking when we think of other acts or things. I have no such sentiments when I perceive or think of a tree or a mountain. Whenever these feelings surround an idea, we call that for which it stands right or wrong. To say that stealing, or any particular deed, is wrong, means that the idea of that act is associated in my mind with feelings of disapproval, etc. Hence the judgment, Stealing is wrong, is equivalent to the proposition that an act which is condemned and prohibited is condemned and prohibited. The words, stealing, adultery, robbery, murder, etc.,

contain everything that is expressed in the predicate, wrong or bad; they express not only ideas of acts, but our attitude toward these acts. The judgment in question is what Kant would call an analytical judgment, i.e., one in which the predicate is but a repetition of the subject. Such judgments are always necessary and self-evident; the predicate is identical with, or only another way of writing, the subject. And when I perceive an act to be right or wrong, it is because that act arouses feelings in me in consequence of which I approve or disapprove of it.1

If all this

7. Criticism of Emotional Intuitionism. is so, the question concerning the innateness of conscience or moral judgment must be formulated in a slightly different manner. Are the moral feelings, we now ask, which accompany certain ideas, the original associates of those ideas? That is, do the deeds which we now designate as right and wrong always arouse, and have they always aroused, in the consciousness, the feelings mentioned before?

We can hardly assert it. One age, or race, or nation, or class, or sect, or even individual, may regard an act as right which another views with indifference or abhorrence. We cannot read without a thrill of pain and horror the accounts of gladiatorial contests which the purest Roman virgin witnessed without the slightest moral compunction.

1 See Paulsen, Ethics, Bk. II, chap v, § 4; Rée, Die Entstehung des Gewissens.

The orthodox Jew is conscience-stricken for having lighted a fire in his house on the Sabbath, the Hindoo for having occasioned the death of a cow, the Turkish woman for exposing her face. The ancient Icelander regarded revenge not merely as sweet, but as praiseworthy and honorable, and "it most likely had never entered the mind of the Celtic chief that robbery merely as robbery was a wicked and disgraceful act.”1

If these feelings of obligation, etc., were the original and inseparable associates of certain modes of conduct, we should expect every age and race to pronounce the same judgments. It would not be possible either to add these feelings to certain ideas or to subtract them from them. We should not be able to educate them away, so to speak. The truth is, our parents and teachers not only arouse ideas in our minds, but also surround these ideas with a moral fringe. The words of the language which they teach us to understand and to speak, express not only thoughts, but values. The terms, murder, robbery, theft, benevolence, veracity, sacrifice, stand not merely for acts and modes of conduct and dispositions of the will, but for our feelings and impulses in reference to them. The past transmits to the present its ideas with the moral halos encircling them. The present frequently changes its values, and so it happens that acts which were once associated in consciousness with the moral sentiments lose the fringe which once

1 Macaulay. Quoted by Bain, Emotions and Will, p. 280.

surrounded them, or arouse new associations.

The

sinner of yesterday becomes the saint of to-morrow. 8. Genesis of Conscience. Let us now see how the process of moralization goes on. The connection between the moral feelings and the ideas of certain acts is largely brought about by education. Children are made to observe that certain acts do not meet with the approval of their surroundings. Frowns, austere looks, shakes of the head, stern words, and other signs of displeasure precede and follow certain modes of conduct. The child impulsively imitates these outward manifestations of disapproval at an early age, and so begins to feel a certain kind of uneasiness in connection with certain acts himself. He also feels pain and anger when certain acts are directed against himself, and instinctively resents them, or frowns them down. Words spoken to him in an authoritative manner by a parent or any other superior arouse in his consciousness feelings of coercion and restraint; he feels instinctively that he must do a certain act or leave it undone.1

1 See Sully, The Human Mind, Vol. II, pp. 164 f.: "The force of a command on a child cannot be wholly attributed to experience and prevision of consequences. It shows itself too early, and is out of proportion to the range and intensity of the experiences of punishment. Here then we have, as it seems, to do with a 'residual phenomenon,' which we must regard as instinctive. This instinctive deference to an uttered command is in part referrible to the superior power of external stimuli, or sense-presentations generally in our mental life. A command given with emphasis (special loudness and distinctness of tone, accompanied by intent