Chapter 12
MEANS AND SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE AS TO RIGHT AND WRONG.
Section I.
Conscience.
*Conscience is a means*, not a source, *of knowledge*. It is analogous to sight and hearing. It is the power of perceiving fitness and unfitness. Yet more, it is consciousness,—a sense of our own personal relation to the fitting and the unfitting, of our power of actualizing them in intention, will, and conduct. It is in this last particular that man differs from the lower animals. They have an instinctive perception of fitness, and an instinctive impulse to acts befitting their nature. But no brute says to himself, “I am acting in accordance with the fitness of things;” while man virtually says to himself, in every act, “I am doing what it is fit for me to do,” or, “I am doing what it is unfitting for me to do.”
*Conscience is a judicial faculty.* Its decisions are based upon such knowledge as the individual has, whether real or imagined, and from whatever source derived. It judges according to such law and evidence as are placed before it. Its verdict is always relatively right, a genuine verdict (_verum dictum_), though, by the absolute standard of right, it may be wrong, through defect of knowledge,—precisely as in a court of law an infallibly wise and incorruptibly just judge may pronounce an utterly erroneous or unjust decision, if he have before him a false statement of facts, or if the law which he is compelled to administer be unrighteous.
We may *illustrate the function of conscience* by reference to a question now agitated in our community,—the question as to the moral fitness of the moderate use of fermented liquors. In civilized society, intoxication is universally known to be opposed to the fitnesses of body and mind, an abuse of alcoholic liquors, and an abuse of the drinker’s own personality; and it is therefore condemned by all consciences, by none more heartily than by those of its victims. But there still remains open the question whether entire abstinence from fermented liquors be a duty, and this is a question of fact. Says one party, “Alcohol, in every form, and in the least quantity, is a virulent poison, and therefore unfit for body and mind.” Says the other party, “Wine, moderately used, is healthful, salutary, restorative, and therefore fitted to body and mind.” Change the opinion of the latter party, their consciences would at once take the other side; and if they retained in precept and practice their present position, they would retain it self-condemned. Change the opinion of the former party, their consciences would assume the ground which they now assail. Demonstrate to the whole community—as it is to be hoped physiology will do at no distant day—the precise truth in this matter, there would remain no difference of conscientious judgment, whatever difference of practice might still continue.
*Conscience*, like all the perceptive faculties, *prompts to action in accordance with its perceptions*. In this respect it differs not in the least from sight, hearing, taste. Our natural proclivity is to direct our movements with reference to the objects within the field of our vision, to govern our conduct by what we hear, to take into our mouths only substances that are pleasing to the taste. Yet fright, temerity, or courage may impel us to incur dangers which we clearly see; opiniativeness or obstinacy may make us inwardly deaf to counsels or warnings which we hear; and motives of health may induce us to swallow the most nauseous drugs. In like manner, our inevitable tendency is to govern our conduct by the fitness of things when clearly perceived; but intense and unrestrained appetite, desire, or affection may lead us to violate that fitness, though distinctly seen and acknowledged.
*Men act in opposition to conscience only under immediate and strong temptation.* The great majority of the acts of bad men are conscientious, but not therefore meritorious; for merit consists not in doing right when there is no temptation to evil, but in resisting temptation. But, as has been said, it is as natural, when there is no inducement to the contrary, to act in accordance with the fitness of things, as it is to act in accordance with what we see and hear. It is the tendency so to act, that alone renders human society possible, in the absence of high moral principle. In order to live, a man must so act with reference to outward nature; still more must he so act, in order to possess human fellowship, physical comfort, transient enjoyment, of however low a type; and the most depraved wretch that walks the earth purchases his continued being and whatever pleasure he derives from it by a thousand acts in accordance with the fitness of things to one in which he violates that fitness.
*Conscience*, like all the perceptive faculties, *is educated by use*. The watchmaker’s or the botanist’s eye acquires an almost microscopic keenness of vision. The blind man’s hearing is so trained as to supply, in great part, the lack of sight. The epicure’s taste can discriminate flavors whose differences are imperceptible to an ordinary palate. In like manner, the conscience that is constantly and carefully exercised in judging of the fit and the unfitting, the right and the wrong, becomes prompt, keen, searching, sensitive, comprehensive, microscopic. On the other hand, conscience, like the senses, if seldom called into exercise, becomes sluggish, inert, incapable of minute discrimination, or of vigilance over the ordinary conduct of life. Yet it is never extinct, and is never perverted. When roused to action, even in the most obdurate, it resumes its judicial severity, and records its verdict in remorseful agony.
Conscience is commonly said to be educated by *the increase of knowledge* as to the relations of beings and objects, as to the moral laws of the universe, and as to religious verities. This, however, is not true. Knowledge does not necessarily quicken the activity of conscience, or enhance its discriminating power. Conscience often is intense and vivid in the most ignorant, inactive and torpid in persons whose cognitive powers have had the most generous culture. Knowledge, indeed, brings the decisions of conscience into closer and more constant conformity with the absolute right, but it does not render its decisions more certainly in accordance with the relative right, that is, with what the individual, from his point of view, ought to will and do. It has the same effect upon conscience that accurate testimony has upon the clear-minded and uncorrupt judge, whose mind is not made thereby the more active or discriminating, nor his decision brought into closer accordance with the facts as they are presented to him. Knowledge is indeed an indispensable auxiliary to conscience; but this cannot be affirmed exclusively of any specific department of knowledge. It is true of all knowledge; for there is no fact or law in the universe that may not in some contingency become the subject-matter or the occasion for the action of conscience. Nothing could seem more remote from the ordinary field of conscience than the theory of planetary motion; yet it was this that gave Galileo the one grand opportunity of his life for testing the supremacy of conscience,—it may be, the sole occasion on which his conscience uttered itself strongly against his seeming interest, and one on which obedience to conscience would have averted the only cloud that ever rested on his fame.
Section II.
Sources Of Knowledge. 1. Observation, Experience, And Tradition.
Except so far as there may have been direct communications from the Supreme Being, all *man’s knowledge* of persons, objects, and relations *is derived*, in the last resort, *from observation*. Experience is merely remembered self-observation. Tradition, oral and written, is accumulated and condensed observation; and by means of this each new generation can avail itself of the experience of preceding generations, can thus find time to explore fresh departments of knowledge, and so transmit its own traditions to the generations that shall follow. Now what we observe in objects is chiefly their properties, or, what is the same thing, their _fitnesses_; for a property is that which fits an object for a specific place or use. What we observe in persons is their relations to other beings and objects, with the fitnesses that belong to those relations. What we experience all resolves itself into the fitness or unfitness of persons and objects to one *another* or to ourselves. What is transmitted in history and in science is the record of fitnesses or unfitnesses that have been ascertained by observation, or tested by experience. The progress of knowledge is simply an enlarged acquaintance with the fitnesses of persons and things. He knows the most, who most fully comprehends the relations in which the beings and objects in the universe stand, have stood, and ought to stand toward one another. Moreover, as when we see a fitness within our sphere of action, we perceive intuitively that it is right to respect it, wrong to violate it, our knowledge of right and wrong is co-extensive with our knowledge of persons and things. The more enlightened and cultivated a nation is, then, the more does it know as to right and wrong, whatever may be its standard of practical morality.
For instance, in the most savage condition, men know, with reference to certain articles of *food and drink*, that they are adapted to relieve the cravings of hunger and thirst, and they know nothing more about them. They are not acquainted with the laws of health, whether of body or of mind. They therefore eat and drink whatever comes to hand, without imagining the possibility of wrong-doing in this matter. But, with the progress of civilization, they learn that various kinds of food and drink impair the health, cloud the brain, enfeeble the working power, and therefore are unfit for human use; and no sooner is this known, than the distinction of right and wrong begins to be recognized, as to what men eat and drink. The more thorough is the knowledge of the human body and of the action of various substances on its organs and tissues, the more minute and discriminating will be the perception of fitness or unfitness as to the objects that tempt the appetites, and the keener will be the sense of right or wrong in their use.
For another illustration of the same principle, we may take *the relation between parents and children*. In the ruder stages of society, and especially among a nomadic or migratory people, there is not a sufficient knowledge of the resources of nature or the possibilities of art, to render even healthy and vigorous life more than tolerable; while for the infirm and feeble, life is but a protracted burden and weariness. At the same time, there is no apprehension of the intellectual and moral worth of human life, still less, of the value even of its most painful experiences as a discipline of everlasting benefit. In fine, life is little more than a mere struggle for existence. What wonder then, that in some tribes filial piety has been wont to relieve superannuated parents from an existence devoid equally of joy and of hope; and that in others parental love may have even dictated the exposure—with a view to their perishing—of feeble, sickly, and deformed children, incapable of being nurtured into self-sustaining and self-depending life? But increased conversance with nature and art constantly reveals new capacities of comfort and happiness in life, and that, not for the strong alone, but for the feeble, the suffering, the helpless, so that there are none to whom humanity knows not how to render continued life desirable. At the same time, a higher culture has made it manifest that the frailest body may be the seat of the loftiest mental activity, moral excellence, and spiritual aspiration, and that in such a body there is often only a surer and more finished education for a higher state of being. Filial piety and parental love, therefore, do all in their power to prolong the flickering existence of the age-worn and decrepit, and to cherish with tender care the life which seems born but to die. There is, then, to the limited view of the savage, an apparent fitness in practices which in their first aspect seem crimes against nature; while increased knowledge develops a real and essential fitness, in all the refinements and endearments of the most persevering and skilful love.
These examples, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show *the dependence of conscience on knowledge*, not for relatively right decisions, but for verdicts in accordance with the absolute right. There is no subject that can be presented for the action of conscience, on which, upon precisely the same principles, divergent and often opposite courses of conduct may not be dictated by more or less accurate knowledge of the subject and its relations.
It will be seen, also, that *with the growth of knowledge, conscience has a constantly wider scope of action*. The number of indifferent acts is thus diminished; the number of positively right or wrong acts, increased. An _indifferent_ act is one for the performance of which, rather than its opposite, no reason, involving a question of right or wrong, can be given. Thus, if the performance or the omission of a specific act be equally fitted to the time, place, circumstances, and persons concerned, the act is an indifferent one; or, if two or more ways of accomplishing a desired end be equally fitted to time, place, circumstances, and persons, the choice between these ways is, morally speaking, a matter of indifference. But with a knowledge both more extensive and more minute of the nature, relations, and fitnesses of beings and objects, we find an increasing number of instances in which acts that seemed indifferent have a clearly perceptible fitness or unfitness, and thus acquire a distinct moral character as right or wrong.
Section III.
Sources Of Knowledge. 2. Law.
*Law is the result of the collective experience*, in part, of particular communities, in part, of the human race as a whole. It encourages, protects, or at least permits whatever acts or modes of conduct have been found or believed to be fitting, in accordance with the nature of things and the well-being of men, and therefore right; it forbids and punishes such acts or modes of conduct as have been found or believed to be unfitting, opposed to nature and to human well-being, and therefore wrong. It is far from perfect; it is below the standard of the most advanced minds; but it represents the average knowledge or belief of the community to which it belongs. *The laws* of any particular state cannot rise far above this average; for laws unsustained by general opinion could not be executed, and if existing in the statute-book, they would not have the nature and force of law, and would remain on record simply because they had lapsed out of notice. Nor can they fall far below this average; for no government can sustain itself while its legislation fails to meet the demands of the people.
While *law* thus expresses the average knowledge of belief, it *tends to perpetuate its own moral standard*. The notions of right which it embodies form a part of the general education. The specific crimes, vices, and wrongs which the law marks out for punishment are regarded by young persons, from their earliest years, as worthy of the most emphatic censure and condemnation; while those which the law leaves unpunished are looked upon as comparatively slight and venial. Not only so, the degree of detestation in which a community learns to look on specific crimes and offences is not in proportion to their actual heinousness, but to the stress of overt ignominy attached to them by legal penalties. Instances of this effect of law on opinion will be readily called to mind. Thus a common thief loses, and can hardly regain his position in society; while the man who by dishonest bankruptcy commits a hundred thefts in one, can hold his place unchallenged, even in the Christian church, while it is known to every one that he is living—it may be in luxury—on the money he has stolen. The obvious reason is that from time immemorial simple theft has been punished with due, when not with undue, severity, while the comparatively recent crime of fraudulent bankruptcy has as yet been brought very imperfectly within the grasp of penal law. Again, no man of clear moral discernment can doubt that he who consciously and willingly imbrutes himself by intoxication is more blameworthy than he who sells alcoholic liquors without knowing whether they are to be used internally or externally, moderately or immoderately, for medicine or for luxury. Yet because the latter makes himself liable to fine and imprisonment, while the former—unless he belong to the unprivileged classes—has legal protection, instead of the disgraceful punishment he deserves, there is a popular prejudice against the vender of strong drink, and a strange tenderness toward the intemperate consumer. Yet another instance. There are crimes worse than murder. There are modes of moral corruption and ruin, whose victims it were mercy to kill. But while the murderer, if he escape the gallows, is an outcast and an object of universal abhorrence, no social ban rests upon him whose crime has been the death of innocence and purity, yet, if reached at all by law, can be compounded by the payment of money.
But though law is in many respects an imperfect moral teacher, and its deficiencies are to be regretted, its *educational power* is strongly felt for good, especially in communities where the administration of justice is strict and impartial. It is of no little worth that a child grows up with some fixed beliefs as to the turpitude of certain forms of evil, especially as the positive enactments of the penal law almost always coincide with the wisest judgments of the best men in the community. Moreover, law is progressive in every civilized community, and in proportion as it approaches the standard of absolute right, it tends to bring the moral beliefs of the people into closer conformity with the same standard. It is, then, a partial and narrow view of law to regard it only or chiefly as the instrument of society for the detection and punishment, or even for the direct prevention of crime. Its far more important function is so to train the greater part of each rising generation, that certain forms and modes of evil-doing shall never enter into their plans or purposes.
The *civil*, no less than the criminal *law is a source of knowledge as to the right*. The law does not create, but merely defines the rights appertaining to persons and property. The laws of different nations are, indeed, widely different; but there may be that in their respective histories which makes a difference in the actual rights of citizens, or their civil codes may present different stages of approach toward the right. Thus the laws as to the conveyance and inheritance of property are in some respects unlike in France, England, and the United States, and vary considerably in the several States of our Union; but there generally exist historical reasons for this variation, and it would be found that the ends of justice are best served, and the reasonable expectations of the people best met in each community, by its own methods of procedure. By the law of the land, then, we may learn civil rights and obligations, which we have not the means of ascertaining by our own independent research.
It remains for us to speak of the *factitious rights and wrongs*, supposed to be created by law. Of these there are many. Thus one mode of transacting a sale or transfer is in itself as good as another; and it might be plausibly maintained that, if the business be fairly and honorably conducted, it matters not whether the legally prescribed forms—sometimes burdensome and costly—be complied with or omitted. The law, it may be said, here creates an obligation for which there is no ground in nature or the fitness of things. This we deny. It is intrinsically fitting that all transactions which are liable to dispute or question should be performed in ways in which they can be attested; and this cannot be effected except by the establishment of uniform methods. He who departs from them performs not only an illegal, but an immoral act; and the legal provisions of the kind under discussion have an educational value in enlarging the knowledge of the individual as to the conditions and means of security, order, and good understanding in human society.
Similar considerations apply to the *crimes created by law*. Smuggling may serve as an instance. Undoubtedly there are smugglers who would not steal; and their apology is that they are but exercising the rights of ownership upon their own property. But the public must have property, else its community is dissolved; government must be able to avail itself of that property, else its functions are suspended. Men need to be taught that the rights of the state are inseparable from those of individuals, and no less sacred, and the laws that protect the revenue are among the most efficient means of teaching this lesson. Their only defect is that they attach less ignominy to frauds upon the revenue than to other modes of theft, and thus fail to declare the whole truth, that there is no moral difference between him who robs the public and him who robs any one of its individual members.
Section IV.
Sources Of Knowledge. 3. Christianity.
*Religion*, in its relation to ethics, may be regarded both as *a source of knowledge*, and as supplying motives for the performance of duty. We are now concerned with it in the former aspect; and it will be sufficient for our present purpose to ascertain how much *Christianity* adds to our knowledge of the fitnesses that underlie all questions of right and duty. We by no means undervalue the beneficent ministry of natural religion in the department of ethics; but the most sceptical admit that Christianity includes all of natural religion, while its disciples claim that it not only teaches natural religion with a certainty, precision, and authority which else were wanting, but imparts a larger and profounder knowledge of God and the universe than is within the scope of man’s unaided reason.
*Christianity covers the entire field of human duty*, and reveals many fitnesses, recognized when seen, but discovered by few or none independently of the teachings and example of its Founder; while it gives the emphasis and sanction of a Divine revelation to many other fitnesses, easily discoverable, but liable to be overlooked and neglected.
In defining *the relations of the individual human soul to God*, Christianity opens to our view a department of duty paramount to all others in importance and interest. His fatherly love and care, his moral government and discipline, his retributive providence, define with unmistakable distinctness certain corresponding modes, in part, of outward action, and in still greater part, of action in that inward realm of thought whence the outward life receives its direction and impulse.
*The brotherhood of the whole human race*, also, reveals obligations which would exist on no other ground; and for the clear and self-evidencing statement of this truth we are indebted solely to Christianity. The visible differences of race, color, culture, religion, and customs, are in themselves dissociating influences. Universal charity is impossible while these differences occupy the foreground. Slavery was a natural and congenial institution under Pagan auspices; nor have we in all ancient extra-Christian literature, unless it be in Seneca (in whom such sentiments may have had indirectly(3) a Christian origin), a single expression of a fellowship broad enough to embrace all diversities of condition, much less, of race. But the Christian, so far as he consents to receive the obvious and undoubted import of Christ’s mission and teachings, must regard all men as, in nature, in the paternal care of the Divine Providence, in religious privileges, rights, and capacities, on an equal footing. With this view, he cannot but perceive the fitness, and therefore the obligation, of many forms of social duty, of enlarged beneficence, of unlimited philanthropy, which on any restricted theory of human brotherhood would be neither fitting nor reasonable.
*The immortality of the soul*, in the next place, casts a light at once broad and penetrating upon and into every department of duty; for it is obvious, without detailed statement, that the fitnesses, needs, and obligations of a terrestrial being of brief duration, and those of a being in the nursery and first stage of an endless existence, are very wide apart,—that the latter may find it fitting, and therefore may deem it right, to do, seek, shun, omit, endure, resign, many things which to the former are very properly matters of indifference. Immortality was, in a certain sense, believed before the advent of Christ, but not with sufficient definiteness and assurance to occupy a prominent place in any ethical system, or to furnish the point of view from which all things in the earthly life were to be regarded. Indeed, some of the most virtuous of the ancients, among others Epictetus, than whom there was no better man, expressly denied the life after death, and, of course, could have had no conception of the aspects of human and earthly affairs as seen in the light of eternity.
Christianity makes yet another contribution to ethical knowledge in *the person and character of its Founder*, exhibiting in him the very fitnesses it prescribes, showing us, as it could not in mere precept, the proportions and harmonies of the virtues, and manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of the gentler virtues,(4) which in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the importance of this teaching by example. The instances are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment; and Jesus Christ tried successfully several experiments in morals that had not been tried before within the memory of man, and evinced, in his own person and by the success of his religion, the superior worth and efficacy of qualities which had not previously borne the name of virtues.
Christianity still further enlarges our ethical knowledge by declaring the *universality of moral laws*. There are many cases, in which it might seem to us not only expedient, but even right, to set aside some principle acknowledged to be valid in the greater number of instances, to violate justice or truth for some urgent claim of charity, or to consent to the performance of a little evil for the accomplishment of a great good. But in all such cases Christianity interposes its peremptory precepts, assuring us on authority which the Christian regards as supreme and infallible, that there are no exceptions or qualifications to any rule of right; that the moral law, in all its parts, is of inalienable obligation, and that the greatest good cannot but be the ultimate result of inflexible obedience.
That *Christianity gives a fuller knowledge of the right* than can be attained independently of its teachings, is shown by the review of all extra-Christian ethical systems. There is not one of these which does not confessedly omit essential portions of the right, and hardly one which does not sanction dispositions and modes of conduct confessedly wrong and evil; while even those who disclaim Christianity as a Divine revelation, fail to detect like omissions and blemishes in the ethics of the New Testament. Thus, though there is hardly a precept of Jesus Christ, the like of which cannot be found in the ethical writings of Greece, China, India, or Persia, the faultlessness and completeness of his teachings give them a position by themselves, and are among the strongest internal evidences of their divinity. They are also distinguished from the ethical systems of other teachers by their positiveness. Others say, “Thou shalt not;” Jesus Christ says, “Thou shalt.” They forbid and prohibit; He commands. They prescribe abstinence from evil; He, a constant approach to perfection. Buddhism is, in our time, often referred to as occupying a higher plane than Christianity; but its precepts are all negative, its virtues are negative, and its disciple is deemed most nearly perfect, when in body, mind, and soul he has made himself utterly quiescent and inert. Christianity, on the other hand, enjoins the unresting activity of all the powers and faculties in pursuit of the highest ends.