(4) So much ought to be admitted by everyone who holds
that conscience may be blunted or may be enlightened.
Consciences vary indefinitely. Some we set down
as hopelessly below the average; others we reverence
as refined and enlightened. The social worker
makes it his aim to “awaken” conscience,
to cultivate it, to bring it up to a high standard.
No practical moralist regards the conscience of the
individual as something which must simply be left
to itself and treated as sacred, no matter what its
character.
(5) The above sufficiently explains some of the puzzles
which confront the man who reverences conscience and
yet studies the consciences of his fellow-men.
He finds that the individual conscience is not an infallible
guide-post pointing to right action; that it is not
a perfect time-keeper, in complete accord with the
watches of other men.
“It’s a turrible thing to have killed
the wrong man,” said the conscience-stricken
illicit distiller in his mountain fastness. “I
never seen good come o’ goodness yet; him as
strikes first is my fancy,” said the dying pirate
in “Treasure Island.” Augustine, passing
over much worse offences, exhausts himself in agonies
of remorse over a boyish prank. [Footnote: See
chapter xx, Sec 78.] Seneca draws up a list of the
most horrifying crimes, and decides that ingratitude
exceeds them all in enormity. [Footnote: On
Benefits, i, 10.]
(6) It appears to be quite evident that consciences
ought to be standardized, and that the standard should
be made a high one. The true standard is the
one set by the Rational Social Will. It is as
much a duty to have a good conscience as it is to
obey the conscience one has.
THE ETHICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
151. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM?—Men
collected into groups and organized in various ways
we call states, and we treat a state as a unit.
We look upon it as having rights and as owing duties
both to individuals and to other states. There
are individuals whom we are apt to regard as representatives
of the state; as instruments, rather than as men—
executive officers, legislators, official interpreters
of its laws, whether good or bad. For states
and their representatives we often have especial moral
standards, differing more or less from those by which
we judge human beings merely as human beings.
It is with the morality of the latter that I am here
concerned.
To be sure, all human beings are to be found in states,
or in that rudimentary social something which foreshadows
the state. To talk of the morality of the isolated
individual is nonsense. Morality is the expression
of the social will; and if we think of even Robinson
Crusoe as a good man, it means that we apply to him
social standards. Had he not been moralized,
he would have killed and eaten Friday, when the latter
made his appearance.
We must, then, take the individual as we find him
in the state, but it is convenient to consider his
morality separately from the ethics of the state,
its institutions and its instruments.
