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guish between rightness and wrongness in thoughts, feelings, volitions, acts, institutions, and so forth. We insist upon the performance of certain modes of conduct and the avoidance of others; we command categorically, Thou shalt, and thou shalt not. We regard ourselves and our fellows as morally bound or obliged to do certain things, and to refrain from others. The breach of rules which we feel ought to be obeyed is condemned by us even when we ourselves are the offenders.

Let us embrace all these facts under a general formula, and say that man pronounces moral judgments, or distinguishes between right and wrong; man has a moral consciousness or a conscience. The question naturally arises, How is this fact to be explained? We cannot solve this problem until we have carefully analyzed the phenomenon itself which provoked it. Before attempting that, however, let us consider some answers which have already been made to the question.

2. The Mythical View. The naïve thinker tries to account for things in a peculiar manner. He regards natural phenomena as the expression of hidden, mysterious forces. He collects a number of similar occurrences and conceives them as the

raphy of the History of Philosophy, see my translation of Weber's History of Philosophy, notes in § 3. For special bibliographies see the notes on particular philosophers in Weber and Paulsen. The beginner will find the works of Paulsen, Seth, Wundt, Sidgwick, and Hyslop most helpful to him in his study of the history of ethics and ethical conceptions.

manifestation of some supernatural principle. Thus rain and thunder are produced by rain and thunder gods, disease by a god of disease. The same tendency impels him to explain the fact of moral consciousness by referring it to supernatural powers. He notices a conflict in himself between two tendencies, the one urging him in the direction of the good, the other in the direction of the evil. Behind each he places an entity, a principle, of which the different occurrences are the expressions. Conscience, he says, is the voice of God in the human soul; it is God directly speaking to us; it is something distinct from the person, something from without that tells him which way to go. Greek mythology personifies the pangs of conscience in the form of the Erinyes or Furies, who pursue the evil-doer as long as he lives; and even Socrates speaks of the dæmon within him who warns him against certain lines of conduct and urges him in the direction of the good.1 And just as the naïve consciousness places an entity behind the inner tendency toward the right, so it makes an entity of the inner tendency toward the evil. The latter is called the principle of evil or the devil, who tempts man to do wrong.

3. The Rationalistic Intuitionists. The mythological view, as we might call it, is superseded by the metaphysical view, which appears in many forms, often in combination with the preceding.

1 See Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen; Gass, Die Lehre vom Ge wissen. See also Bender, Mythologie und Metaphysik.

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,* "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.

3 Died 407.

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

5 A contemporary of St. Augustine.

"a certain natural holiness, as it were, which presides over the citadel of the mind, a judgment of good and evil."1 Augustine 2 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 problem the Schoolmen modified the view just set 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, ovveídnois). 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.

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

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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.

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