Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law Part 7

3. Kant readily takes up this idea, shaping it after his own fas.h.i.+on.

He contends,--and herein his doctrine is not merely deficient, but positively in error,--that the Categorical Imperative, uttered by a man's own reason, has the force of a law, made by that same reason; so that the legislative authority is within the breast of the doer, who owes it obedience. This he calls the _autonomy of reason_. It is also called Independent Morality, inasmuch as it establishes right and wrong without regard to external authority, or to the consequences of actions, or to rewards and punishments. The doctrine is erroneous, inasmuch as it undertakes to settle the matter of right and wrong without reference to external authority; and inasmuch as it makes the reason within a man, not the promulgator of the law to him, but his own legislator. For a law is a precept, a command: now no one issues precepts, or gives commands, to himself. To command is an act of jurisdiction; and jurisdiction, like justice (see c. v., s. ix., n. 1, p. 102) requires a distinction of persons, one ruler, and another subject. But the reason in a man is not a distinct subject from the will, appet.i.tes, or other faculties within him, to which reason dictates: they are all one nature, one person, one man; consequently, no one of them can strictly be said to command the rest; and the dictate of reason, as emanating from within oneself, is not a law. But without a law, there is no strict obligation. Therefore the whole theory of obligation is not locked up in the Categorical Imperative, as Kant formulated it.

4. The above argumentation evinces that G.o.d is not under any law; for there is no other G.o.d above Him to command Him. As for the ideas of what is meet and just in the Divine intelligence, though the Divine will, being a perfect will, is not liable to act against them, yet are those ideas improperly called a law to the Divine will, because intellect and will are identified in one G.o.d. Kant's doctrine makes us all G.o.ds. It is a deification of the human intellect, and identification of that intellect with the supreme and universal Reason; and at the same time a release of the human will from all authority extraneous to the individual. This amounts to a putting off of all authority properly so called, and makes each man as sovereign and unaccountable as his Maker. "Thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said: I am G.o.d, and sit in the chair of G.o.d: and hast set thy heart as if it were the heart of G.o.d: whereas thou art a man and not G.o.d."

(Ezech. xxviii. 2.) Kant is thus the father of the pantheistic school of Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, and Hegel.

5. But it has been contended that this phrase about a man who does wrong _breaking a law_, is only a metaphor and figure of speech, unless it be used with reference to the enactment of some civil community. Thus John Austin says that a _natural law_ is a law which is not, but which he who uses the expression thinks ought to be made.

At this rate _sin_ is not a transgression of any law, except so far as it happens to be, in the lawyer's sense of the word, a _crime_, or something punishable in a human court of justice. There will then be no law but man's law. How then am I _obliged_ to obey man's law? Dr.

Bain answers: "Because, if you disobey, you will be _punished_." But that punishment will be either just or unjust: if unjust, it originates no obligation: if just, it presupposes an obligation, as it presupposes a crime and sin, that is, an obligation violated. There seems to be nothing left for John Austin but to fall back upon Kant and his Categorical Imperative, and say that whoever rebels against the duly const.i.tuted authority of the State in which he lives, is a rebel against the reason that dwells within his own breast, and which requires him to behave like a citizen. So that ultimately it is not the State, but his own reason that he has offended; and the State has no authority over him except what his own reason gives.

6. If this were true, there would be no sin anywhere except what is called _philosophical sin_, that is, a breach of the dignity of man's rational nature; and the hardest thing that could be said in reprobation of a wrongdoer, would be that he had gone against himself, and against his fellow-men, by outraging reason, the common attribute of the race.

7. Far worse than that has the sinner done. He has offended against his own reason, and thereby against a higher Reason, substantially distinct from his, standing to it in the relation of Archetype to type, a Living Reason, [Greek: hepsychos logos] (cf. Ar., _Eth_., V., iv., 7), purely and supremely rational. The Archetype is outraged by the violation of the type. Moreover, as the two are substantially distinct, the one being G.o.d, the other a faculty of man, there is room for a command, for law. A man may transgress and sin, in more than the _philosophical_ sense of the word: he may be properly a _law-breaker_, by offending against this supreme Reason, higher and other than his own.

8. Here we must pause and meditate a parable.--There was a certain monastery where the monks lived in continual violation of monastic observance. Their Abbot was a holy man, a model of what a monk ought to be. But though perfectly cognisant of the delinquencies of his community, he was content to display to his subjects the edifying example of his own life, and to let it appear that he was aware of their doings and pained at them. He would croon softly as he went about the house old h.e.l.l's words: "Not so, my sons, not so: why do ye these kind of things, very wicked things?" But the monks took no notice of him. It happened in course of time that the Abbot went away for about ten days. What he did in that time, never transpired: though there was some whisper of certain "spiritual exercises," which he was said to have been engaged in. Certain it is, that he returned to his monastery, as he left it, a monk devout and regular: the monk was the same, but the Abbot was mightily altered. The morning after his arrival, a Chapter was held; the Abbot had the Rule read from cover to cover, and announced his intention of enforcing the same. And he was as good as his word. Transgressions of course abounded: but the monks discovered that to transgress was quite a different thing now from what it had been. Seeing the law proclaimed, and the Abbot in earnest to enforce it, they too reformed themselves: the few who would not reform had to leave. The subsequent holy lives of those monks do not enter into this history.

9. Now, we might fancy G.o.d our Lord like the Abbot of that monastery in the early years of his rule. We might fancy the Supreme Reason, displeased indeed, as Reason must be, at the excesses and follies of mankind, but not otherwise commanding men to avoid those evil courses.

Were G.o.d to be thus quiescent, what we have called (n. 6) _philosophical sin_, would indeed carry this additional malice, beyond what was there set down, of being an offence against G.o.d, but it would not be a grievous offence: for it would not be a sin in the proper sense of the term, not being a transgression of the law of G.o.d, inasmuch as G.o.d, by the supposition, would have given no law. But the supposition itself is absurd. G.o.d could not so withhold His command.

He is free indeed not to command, but that only by not creating. If He wills to have creatures, He must likewise will to bind them to certain lines of action: which will to bind in G.o.d is a law to the creature.

10. This a.s.sertion, that _G.o.d cannot but will to bind His creatures to certain lines of action_, must be proved, though in the ascent we have to mount to high regions, and breathe those subtle airs that are wafted round the throne of the Eternal. As G.o.d is the one source of all reality and of all power, not only can there be no being which He has not created and does not still preserve, but no action either can take place without His concurrence. G.o.d must go with His every creature in its every act: otherwise, on the creature's part, nothing could be done. Now, G.o.d cannot be indifferent what manner of act He shall concur unto. A servant or a subject may be indifferent what command he receives: he may will simply to obey,--to go here or there, as he is bid, or to be left without orders where he is. That is because he leaves the entire direction and management of the household to his master. But for G.o.d to be thus indifferent what action He should lend His concurrence to, would be to forego all design and purpose of His own as to the use and destiny of the creatures which He has made and continually preserves. This G.o.d cannot do, for He cannot act aimlessly. It would be renouncing the direction of His own work, and making the creature His superior. G.o.d is incapable of such renunciation and subservience. He must, then, will the cooperation which He lends, and the concurrent action of the creature, to take a certain course, regulated and prescribed by Himself: which is our proposition, that G.o.d cannot but will to bind His creatures to certain lines of action. If His free creatures choose to stray from these lines, G.o.d indeed still cooperates, and to His cooperation is to be ascribed the _physical goodness_ of the action, not its _moral inordinateness and inopportuneness_. Still, as the action is morally inordinate, G.o.d may be said to cooperate, in a manner, where He would not: whence we gather some conception of the enormity of sin. (See c.

vii., nn. 5, 6, pp. 130, 131.)

11. The lines of action laid down and prescribed by G.o.d are not arbitrary and irrespective of the subject of the command. They are determined in each case by the nature of the subject. The Author of Nature is not apt to subvert that order which proceeds from Himself.

He bids every creature act up to that nature wherein He has created it. His commands follow the line of natural exigency. What this natural exigency amounts to in man in regard to his human acts, we have already seen, (c. vi., s. i., p. 109.)

12. The difference between a necessary and a free agent is, that the former is determined by its nature to act in a certain way, and cannot act otherwise: the latter may act in more ways than one. Still, as we have seen, the nature even of a free agent is not indifferent to all manner of action. It requires, though it does not constrain, the agent to act in certain definite ways, the ways of moral goodness. Acting otherwise, as he may do, the free agent gainsays his own nature, taken as a whole, a thing that a necessary agent can nowise do. G.o.d therefore who, as we have shown, wills and commands all creatures whatsoever to act on the lines of their nature, has especial reason to give this command to His rational creatures, with whom alone rests the momentous freedom to disobey.

13. We are now abreast of the question, of such burning interest in these days, as to the connection of Ethics with Theology, or of Morality with Religion. I will not enquire whether the dogmatic atheist is logically consistent in maintaining any distinction between right and wrong: happily, dogmatic atheists do not abound. But there are many who hold that, whether there be a G.o.d or no, the fact ought not to be imported into Moral Science: that a Professor of Ethics, as such, has no business with the name of the Almighty on his lips, any more than a lecturer on Chemistry or Fortification. This statement must be at once qualified by an important proviso. If we have any duties of wors.h.i.+p and praise towards our Maker: if there is such a virtue as religion, and such a sin as blasphemy: surely a Professor of Morals must point that out. He cannot in that case suppress all reference to G.o.d, for the same reason that he cannot help going into the duties of a man to his wife, or of an individual to the State, if marriage and civil government are natural inst.i.tutions. If there is a G.o.d to be wors.h.i.+pped, any book on Moral Science is incomplete without a chapter on Religion. But the question remains, whether the name of G.o.d should enter into the other chapters, and His being and authority into the very foundations of the science. I do not mean the metaphysical foundations; for Metaphysics are like a two-edged sword, that cleaves down to the very marrow of things, and must therefore reveal and discover G.o.d. But Morality, like Mathematics, takes certain metaphysical foundations for granted, without enquiring into them. On these foundations we rear the walls, so to speak, of the science of Ethics without reference to G.o.d, but we cannot put the roof and crown upon the erection, unless we speak of Him and of His law. Moral distinctions, as we saw (c. vi., s. i. n. 7, p. 113), are antecedent to the Divine command to observe them: and though they rest ultimately on the Divine nature, that ultimate ground belongs to Metaphysics, not to Ethics. Ethics begins with human nature, pointing out that there are certain human acts that do become a man, and others that do not.

(c. vi., s. i., p. 109.) To see this, it is not necessary to look up above man. Thus we shall prove lying, suicide, and murder to be wrong, and good fellows.h.i.+p a duty, without needing to mention the Divine Being, though by considering Him the proof gains in cogency. Or rather, apart from G.o.d we shall prove certain acts wrong, and other acts obligatory as duties, _philosophically_ speaking, with an initial and fundamental wrongness and obligation. In the present section we have proved once for all, that what is wrong philosophically, or is philosophically a duty, is the same also _theologically_. Thus the initial and fundamental obligation is transformed into an obligation formal and complete. Therefore, hereafter we shall be content to have established the philosophical obligation, knowing that the theological side is invariably conjoined therewith. As St. Thomas says (1a 2ae, q.

71, art. 6, ad 5): "By theologians sin is considered princ.i.p.ally as it is an offence against G.o.d: but by the moral philosopher, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason." But what is contrary to reason offends G.o.d, and is forbidden by Divine law, and thus becomes a _sin_. No G.o.d, no sin. Away from G.o.d, there is _indecency_ and _impropriety, unreasonableness, abomination_, and _brutality_, all this in view of outraged humanity: there is likewise _crime_ against the State: but the formal element of _sin_ is wanting. With sin, of course, disappears also the punishment of sin as such. Thus to leave G.o.d wholly out of Ethics and Natural Law, is to rob moral evil of half its terrors, and of that very half which is more easily "understanded of the people." A consideration for school-managers.

_Readings_.--St. Thos., 1a, q. 22, art. 2, in corp. (against Lucretius, ii. 646-651); Suarez, _De Legibus_, II., vi., nn. 3, 5-9, 13, 14, 17, 20-24.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE ETERNAL LAW.

1. A law is defined to be: A precept just and abiding, given for promulgation to a perfect community. A law is primarily a rule of action. The first attribute of a law is that it be _just_: just to the subject on whom it is imposed, as being no harmful abridgment of his rights: just also to other men, as not moving him to injustice against them. An unjust law is no law at all, for it is not a rule of action.

Still, we may sometimes be bound, when only our own rights are infringed, to submit to such an imposition, not as a law, for it is none, but on the score of prudence, to escape direr evils. A law is no fleeting, occasional rule of conduct, suited to meet some pa.s.sing emergency or superficial disturbance. The reason of a law lies deep down, lasting and widespread in the nature of the governed. A law, then, has these two further attributes of permanence in duration and amplitude in area. Every law is made for all time, and lives on with the life of the community for whom it is enacted, for ever, unless it be either expressly or implicitly repealed. A law in a community is like a habit in an individual, an accretion to nature, which abides as part of the natural being, and guides henceforth the course of natural action. This a.n.a.logy holds especially of those laws, which are not enacted all of a sudden--and such are rarely the best laws--but grow upon the people with gradual growth unmarked, like a habit by the repet.i.tion of acts, in the way of immemorial custom. I have said that a law is for a community, that it requires amplitude and large area. A law is not laid down for an individual, except so far as his action is of importance to the community. The private concerns of one man do not afford scope and room enough for a law. Neither do the domestic affairs of one family. A father is not a legislator. A law aims at a deep, far-reaching, primary good. But the private good of an individual, and the domestic good of a family, are not primary goods, inasmuch as the individual and the family are not primary but subordinate beings: not complete and independent, but dependent and partial; not wholes but parts. The individual is part of the family, and the family is part of a higher community. It is only when we are come to some community which is not part of any higher, that we have found the being, the good of which is primary good, the aim of law.

Such a community, not being part of any higher community in the same order, is in its own order a perfect community. Thus, in the temporal order, the individual is part of the State. The State is a perfect community; and the good of the State is of more consequence than the temporal well-being of any individual citizen. The temporal good of the individual, then, is matter of law, in so far as it is subservient to the good of the State. We have, then, to hold that a law is given to the members of a perfect community for the good of the whole. Not every precept, therefore, is a law: nor every superior a lawgiver: for it is not every superior that has charge of the good of a perfect community. Many a precept is given to an individual, either for his private good, as when a father commands his child, or for the private good of him that issues the precept, as when a master commands a servant. But every law is a precept: for a law is an imperative rule of action, in view of a good that is necessary, at least with the necessity of convenience. To every law there are counsels attached. A law may be said to be a _nucleus_ of precept, having an _envelope_ of counsel. Every law has also a pendent called punishment for those who break it: this is called the _sanction_ of the law. A law is also for _promulgation_, as a birch rod for _application_. The promulgation, or application, brings the law home to the subject, but is not part of the law itself. So much for the definition of Law.

2. We have to learn to look upon the whole created universe, and the fulness thereof, angels, men, earth, sun, planets, fixed stars, all things visible and invisible, as one great and perfect community, whose King and Lawgiver is G.o.d. He is King, because He is Creator and Lord. But lords.h.i.+p and kings.h.i.+p are different things, even in G.o.d. It is one thing to be lord and master, owner and proprietor of a chattel, property and domain: it is another thing to be king and governor, lawgiver and judge of political subjects. The former is called _power of dominion_, or right of owners.h.i.+p, the latter is _power of jurisdiction_. Power of dominion is for the good of him who wields it: but power of jurisdiction is for the good of the governed. As G.o.d is Lord of the universe, He directs all its operations to His own glory.

As He is King, He governs as a king should govern, for the good of His subjects. In intellectual creatures, whose will is not set in opposition to G.o.d, the subject's good and the glory of the Lord finally coincide. G.o.d's power of dominion is the concern of theologians: the moralist is taken up with His power of jurisdiction, from whence emanates the moral law.

3. In the last chapter (s. ii., nn. 9, 10, pp. 120, 121), we stated the moral law in these terms, that _G.o.d wills to bind His creatures to certain lines of action_, not arbitrary lines, as we saw, but the natural lines of each creature's being. The law thus stated takes in manifestly a wider field than that of moral action. There is in fact no action of created things that is not comprehended under this statement. It comprises the laws of physical nature and the action of physical causes, no less than the moral law and human acts. It is the one primeval law of the universe, antecedent to all actual creation, and co-eternal with G.o.d. And yet not necessary as G.o.d: for had G.o.d not decreed from all eternity to create--and He need not have decreed it--neither would He have pa.s.sed in His own Divine Mind this second decree, necessarily consequent as it is upon the decree of creation, namely, that every creature should act in the mode of action proper of its kind. This decree, supervening from eternity upon the creative decree, is called the Eternal Law.

4. This law does not govern the acts of G.o.d Himself. G.o.d ever does what is wise and good, not because He binds Himself by the decree of His own will so to act, but because of His all-perfect nature. His own decrees have not for Him the force of a precept: that is impossible in any case: yet He cannot act against them, as His nature allows not of irresolution, change of mind, and inconsistency.

5. Emanating from the will of G.o.d, and resting upon the nature of the creature, it would seem that the Eternal Law must be irresistible.

"Who resisteth His will?" asks the Apostle. (Rom. ix. 19.) "The streams of sacred rivers are flowing upwards, and justice and the universal order is wrenched back." (Euripides, _Medea_, 499.) It is only the perversion spoken of by the poet, that can anywise supply the instance asked for by the Apostle. The thing is impossible in the physical order. The rivers cannot flow upwards, under the conditions under which rivers usually flow: but justice and purity, truth and religion may be wrenched back, in violation of nature and of the law eternal. The one thing that breaks this law is sin. Sin alone is properly unnatural. The world is full of physical evils, pain, famine, blindness, disease, decay and death. But herein is nothing against nature: the several agents act up to their nature, so far as it goes: it is the defect of nature that makes the evil. But sin is no mere shortcoming: it is a turning round and going against nature, as though the July sun should freeze a man, or the summer air suffocate him.

Physical evil comes by the defect of nature, and by permission of the Eternal Law. But the moral evil of sin is a breach of that law.

6. A great point with modern thinkers is the inviolability of the laws of physical nature, _e.g_., of gravitation or of electrical induction.

If these laws are represented, as J. S. Mill said they should be, as _tendencies_ only, they are truly inviolable. The law of gravitation is equally fulfilled in a falling body, in a body suspended by a string, and in a body borne up by the ministry of an angel. There is no law of nature to the effect that a supernatural force shall never intervene. Even if, as may be done perhaps in the greatest miracles, G.o.d suspends His concurrence, so that the creature acts not at all, even that would be no violation of the physical law of the creature's action: for all that such a law provides is, that the creature, if it acts at all, shall act in a certain way, not that G.o.d shall always give the concurrence which is the necessary condition of its acting at all. The laws of physical nature then are, strictly speaking, never violated, although the _course_ of nature is occasionally altered by supernatural interference, and continually by free human volition. But the laws of physical nature, in the highest generality, are identified with the moral law. The one Eternal Law embraces all the laws of creation. It has a physical and a moral side. On the former it _effects_, on the latter it _obliges_, but on both sides it is imperative; and though in moral matters it be temporarily defeated by sin, still the moral behest must in the end be fulfilled as surely as the physical behest. The defeat of the law must be made good, the sin must be punished. Of the Eternal Law working itself out in the form of punishment, we shall speak presently.

7. It is important to hold this conception of the Eternal Law as embracing physical nature along with rational agents. To confine the law, as modern writers do, to rational agents alone, is sadly to abridge the view of its binding force. The rigid application of physical laws is brought home to us daily by science and by experience: it is a point gained, to come to understand that the moral law, being ultimately one with those physical laws, is no less absolute and indefeasible, though in a different manner, than they.

It is hard for us to conceive of laws being given to senseless things.

We cannot ourselves prescribe to iron or to sulphur the manner of its action. As Bacon says (_Novum Organum_, i., Aphorism 4): "Man can only put natural bodies together or asunder: nature does the rest within."

That is, man cannot make the laws of nature: he can only arrange collocations of materials so as to avail himself of those laws. But G.o.d makes the law, issuing His command, the warrant without which no creature could do anything, that every creature, rational and irrational, shall act each according to its kind or nature. Such is the Eternal Law.

_Readings_.--Suarez, _De Legibus_, I., xii.; St. Thos., 1a 2ae, q. 90, art. 2-4; _ib_., q. 91, art. 1, in corp., ad 1; _ib_., q. 93, art. 1, in corp.; _ib_., q. 93, art. 4, in corp.; _ib_., q. 93, art. 5, in corp.; _ib_., q. 93, art. 6, in corp.; Suarez, _De Legibus_, II., vi.; Cicero, _De Legibus_, II., iv.; _id_., _De Republica_, iii. 22.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE.

SECTION I.--_Of the Origin of Primary Moral Judgments_.

1. It is an axiom of the schools, that whatever is received, is received according to the manner of the recipient. We have spoken of the law that governs the world, as that law has existed from eternity in the mind of G.o.d. We have now to consider that law as it is received in creatures, and becomes the inward determinant of their action.

Action is either necessary or free. The great mult.i.tude of creatures are wholly necessary agents. Even in free agents, most of what is in them, and much that proceeds from them, is of necessity, and beyond the control of their will. Of necessary action, whether material or mental, we shall have nothing further to say. It is governed by the Eternal Law, but it is not matter of moral philosophy. Henceforth we have to do with that law, only as it is received in free agents, as such, to be the rule of their conduct. The agents being free, the law must be received in a manner consonant with their freedom. It is proper to a free and rational being to guide itself, not to be dragged or pushed, but to go its own way, yet not arbitrarily, but according to law. The law for such a creature must be, not a physical determinant of its action, but a law operating in the manner of a motive to the will, obliging and binding, yet not constraining it: a law written in the intellect after the manner of knowledge: a law within the mind and consciousness of the creature, whereby it shall measure and regulate its own behaviour. This is the _natural law of conscience_. It is the Eternal Law, as made known to the rational creature, whereby to measure its own free acts. The Eternal Law is in the Mind of G.o.d: the Natural Law in the minds of men and angels. The Eternal Law adjusts all the operations of creatures: the Natural Law, only the free acts of intellectual creatures. And yet, for binding force, the Natural Law is one with the Eternal Law. On a summer evening one observes the sunset on the west coast; the heavens are all aglow with the sun s.h.i.+ning there, and the waters are aglow too, reflecting the sun's rays. The Eternal Law is as the sun there in the heavens, the Natural Law is like the reflection in the sea. But it is one light.

2. It is called the _Natural Law_, first, because it is found, more or less perfectly expressed, in all rational beings: now whatever is found in all the individuals of a kind, is taken to belong to the _specific nature_, or type of that kind. Again it is called the _Natural Law_, because it is a thing which any rational nature must necessarily compa.s.s and contain within itself in order to arrive at its own proper perfection and maturity. Thus this inner law is natural, in the sense in which walking, speech, civilization are natural to man. A man who has it not, is below the standard of his species. It will be seen that dancing, singing--at least to a pitch of professional excellence--and a knowledge of Greek, are not, in this sense, _natural_. The Natural Law is not _natural_, in the sense of "coming natural," as provincial people say, or coming to be in man quite irrespectively of training and education, as comes the power of breathing. It was absurd of Paley (_Mor. Phil._, bk. i., c. v.) to look to the wild boy of Hanover, who had grown up in the woods by himself, to display in his person either the Natural Law or any other attribute proper to a rational creature.

3. We call this the _natural law of conscience_, because every individual's conscience applies this law, as he understands it, to his own particular human acts, and judges of their morality accordingly.

What then is conscience? It is not a faculty, not a habit, it is an act. It is a practical judgment of the understanding. It is virtually the conclusion of a syllogism, the major premiss of which would be some general principle of command or counsel in moral matters; the minor, a statement of fact bringing some particular case of your own conduct under that law; and the conclusion, which is conscience, a decision of the case for yourself according to that principle: _e.g._, "There is no obligation of going to church on (what Catholics call) a _day of devotion_: this day I am now living is only a day of devotion; therefore I am not bound to go to church to-day." Such is the train of thought, not always so explicitly and formally developed, that pa.s.ses through the mind, when conscience works. It is important to remember that conscience is an act of intellect, a judgment, not on a matter of general principle, not about other people's conduct, but about _my own action_ in some particular case, and the amount of moral praise or blame that I deserve, or should deserve, for it. As regards action already done, or not done, conscience _testifies, accusing_ or _excusing_. As regards action contemplated, conscience _restrains_ or _prompts_, in the way of either obligation or counsel.

4. Conscience is not infallible: it may err, like any other human judgment. A man may be blind, if not exactly to his own action, at least to the motives and circ.u.mstances of his action. He may have got hold of a wrong general principle of conduct. He may be in error as to the application of his principle to the actual facts. In all these ways, what we may call the _conscientious syllogism_ may be at fault, like any other syllogism. It may be a bad syllogism, either in logical form, or in the matter of fact a.s.serted in the premisses. This is an _erroneous conscience_. But, for action contemplated, even an erroneous conscience is an authoritative decision. If it points to an obligation, however mistakenly, we are bound either to act upon the judgment or get it reversed. We must not contradict our own reason: such contradiction is moral evil, (c. v., s. iii., n. 3, p. 74.) If conscience by mistake sets us free of what is objectively our bounden duty, we are not there and then bound to that duty: but we may be bound at once to get that verdict of conscience overhauled and reconsidered. Conscience in this case has proceeded in ignorance, which ignorance will be either _vincible_ or _invincible_, and must be treated according to the rules provided in the matter of _ignorance_, (c. iii., s. i., nn. 3-5, p. 27). An obligation, neglected in invincible ignorance, makes a merely _material sin_. (c. iii., s. ii., n. 7, p. 33.)

5. There is another element of mind, often confounded under one name with conscience, but distinct from it, as a habit from an act, and as principles from their application. This element the schoolmen called _synderesis_. [Footnote 10]

[Footnote 10: On the derivation of this word, whether from [Greek: synedaesis] or [Greek: syntaeresis], see _Athenaeum_, 1877, vol. i., pp. 738, 798, vol. iii. pp. 16, 48.]

_Synderesis_ is an habitual hold upon primary moral judgments, as, that we must do good, avoid evil, requite benefactors, honour superiors, punish evil-doers. There is a hot controversy as to how these primary moral judgments arise in the mind. The coals of dispute are kindled by the a.s.sumption, that these moral judgments must needs have a totally other origin and birth in the mind than speculative first principles, as, that the whole is greater than the part, that two and two are four, that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. The a.s.sumption is specious, but unfounded.

It looks plausible because of this difference, that moral judgments have emotions to wait upon them, speculative judgments have not.

Speculative judgments pa.s.s like the philosophers that write them down, unheeded in the quiet of their studies. But moral judgments are rulers of the commonwealth: they are risen to as they go by, with majesty preceding and cares coming after. Their presence awakens in us certain emotions, conflicts of pa.s.sion, as we think of the good that we should do, but have not done, or of the evil that goes unremedied and unatoned for. Commonly a man cannot contemplate his duty, a difficult or an unfulfilled duty especially, without a certain emotion, very otherwise than as he views the axioms of mathematics. There is a great difference emotionally, but intellectually the two sets of principles, speculative and moral, are held alike as necessary truths, truths that not only are, but must be, and cannot be otherwise: truths in which the _predicate_ of the proposition that states them is contained under the _subject_. Such are called _self-evident propositions_; and the truths that they express, _necessary truths_. The enquiry into the origin of our primary moral judgments is thus merged in the question, how we attain to necessary truth.

6. The question belongs to Psychology, not to Ethics: but we will treat it briefly for ethical purposes. And first for a clear notion of the kind of judgments that we are investigating.

"The primary precepts of the law of nature stand to the practical reason as the first principles of scientific demonstration do to the speculative reason: for both sets of principles are self-evident. A thing is said to be self-evident in two ways, either _in itself_, or _in reference to us. _In itself_ every proposition, the predicate of which can be got from consideration of the subject is said to be self-evident. But it happens that to one who is ignorant of the definition of the subject, such a proposition will not be self-evident: as this proposition, _Man is a rational being_, is self-evident in its own nature, because to name man is to name something rational; and yet, to one ignorant what man is, this proposition is not self-evident. And hence it is that, as Boethius says: "there are some axioms self-evident to all alike." Of this nature are all those propositions whose terms are known to all, as, _Every whole is greater than its part_; and, _Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another_. Some propositions again are self-evident only to the wise, who understand the meaning of the terms: as, to one who understands that an angel is not a body, it is self-evident that an angel is not in a place by way of circ.u.mscription; [Footnote 11] which is not manifest to others, who do not understand the term." (St. Thos., 1a 2ae q. 94, art. 2, in corp.)

[Footnote 11: _Circ.u.mscriptive_, which word is explained by St. Thos., 1a, q. 52. art. 1.]