THE
ASCENCE
MAURICE
B 823,169
BJ
1471
.M45

FROM THE LIBRARY OF
ROBERT MARK WENLEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
1896
1929
GIFT OF HIS CHILDREN
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
My π Bicku del at se
1933
{

Rohandlen
48
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
THE CONSCIENCE.
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY,
DELIVERED IN
The University of Cambridge.
Friedruck.
Denison
BY
MAURICE,
PROFESSOR OF CASUISTRY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
London and Cambridge:
MACMILLAN
AND CO.
1868.
[All Rights reserved.]
© 3-11-344 J, A
gt. wenden Lib
де
3 - 9-3 9
ΤΟ
EDMUND LUSHINGTON, Esq.
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.
MY DEAR LUSHINGTON,
You kindly sent me a copy of those most in-
teresting Remains of Professor Ferrier, which owe so
much to the affectionate diligence and critical judg-
ment of Sir Alexander Grant and yourself. It is not
to prove my gratitude for this valuable gift that I
take the liberty of dedicating these Lectures to you.
Even the pleasure and honour of associating my name
with yours might not have tempted me to that
vanity. But a writer about the Conscience ought not
to let any burthen rest upon his own. After I had
delivered these Lectures, I turned to Ferrier's Philo-
sophy of Consciousness,' and found that he had an-
ticipated several of the remarks which I had made on
the word I, and on the mischief of smothering it under
general phrases such as 'Mind' or 'Reason.' I cannot
be sure that sentences of his essays which struck me
many years ago when I read them in Blackwood's Maga-
zine may not have fixed themselves in my memory, and
that I may not unawares have mingled his thoughts
with my own. If so, I cannot do better than direct
your attention to the plagiarism, and beg my readers to
vi
DEDICATION.
trace it to its source.
They will find their recompense
in the knowledge they will acquire of Professor Ferrier's
teaching if it destroys their interest in mine.
You will perceive that in other respects there is very
little in common between these rough Lectures and the
books, so conspicuous for rich and various culture, which
you have edited. I have had no notion of producing a
'Philosophy of Consciousness.'
My aim has been to associate the Conscience with
the acts and thoughts of our ordinary existence. I
have abstained, some will think even pedantically, from
the use of philosophical terms: I have only touched on
philosophical systems when I fancied they were interfer-
ing with the rights and duties of every wayfarer. If I
can lead a few young men in what I must still call your
University, to think more earnestly, to live more bravely,
I trust that the many obvious deficiencies of my book will
not hinder you from owning me as a fellow-worker.
Believe me,
My dear Lushington,
Very sincerely yours,
F. D. MAURICE.
ON THE WORD 'I'
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGB
1
LECTURE II.
ON THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'
28
LECTURE III.
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS
51
LECTURE IV.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE
75
LECTURE V.
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE
101
•
LECTURE VI.
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE
123
viii
CONTENTS.
LECTURE VII.
PAGE
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE
144
LECTURE VIII.
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE
LECTURE IX.
166
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST IN THE MODERN World
189
LECTURE I.
ON THE WORD 'I'.
gainst the
You may wonder at the title which I have chosen LECT. I.
for my first lecture.
first lecture. I have taken it because I Charges a-
can find none which explains so well what will Moral
be the subject of all my lectures; what kind of
facts will be considered in them, what claim they
have to be practical.
Teacher.
vague de-
There are grave doubts among men of the (1) He is a
world whether the student of morals has any real claimer.
subject to treat of. He can talk much about the
blessings of virtue and the mischiefs of vice. But
Lord Macaulay, who spent a great part of his
life in dealing with virtues and vices as a legis-
lator, or in recording the effects of them as a
historian, said, you may remember, that the
most brilliant writer upon them did not deserve
half the gratitude from mankind which is due
to the maker of a substantial pair of shoes.
Again, the moralist may dwell upon different
1
2
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
(2) He is
busy with
idle dis-
putes.
LECT. I. opinions which have descended upon us from
other times, or have been produced in our own.
He may speak of Sensualists and Utilitarians and
Transcendentalists. Grand names assuredly; but
how do they or the doctrines which they represent
concern the business of life? Who that is occu-
pied with facts can care about them? Who that
is seeking for amusement will not find elsewhere
what is much more lively and stimulating?
the actual.
(3) He pre-
Or if the moral teacher adopts the distinc-
fers the
possible to tion which is sanctioned by one of the ablest and
most accomplished of his class-if he says that his
business is with what ought to be, that of other
students with what is-can there be a clearer or
fuller confession that he means to leave the actual
world for some other world which he has ima-
gined?
Such remarks as these you will hear in ordi-
nary society, from dull men and clever men, from
those who most profess the sober wisdom of age,
or from those who most affect youthful fashions.
Nor am I safe even in a place specially devoted to
learning. Unpleasant comparisons may be made
between my work and that which goes on in other
(4) He can- lecture-rooms. The Geometrician, the Geologist,
the Astronomer, the teacher of any branch of
teacher, to natural history can point to things with which
not point,
like the
physical
facts.
he has to do; if he discovers secret laws they are
laws which have reference to these things, without
a knowledge of which they cannot be safely or
effectively used. Of what things can I speak
ON THE WORD 'I'.
3
which answer to these? Shall I not be leading LECT. I.
you away from objects which can be handled or
seen, or reached by indisputable demonstrations
when they cannot be handled or seen, into a
region of shadows, where distinct apprehension
where secure proof is impossible? If the shadows
ever become realities, must they not have under-
gone the change because I have travelled into a
province which is not mine, because I have
usurped duties which are much better performed
by others?
I-its
be real and
generally
These are formidable difficulties; if I cannot The Word
remove them, I can scarcely hope that you will claims to
listen to me with patience. Beginning then with practical
that objector who especially boasts the title of confessed.
the practical man, I venture to ask, 'Does the
word I seem to you an unpractical word, one
which only concerns shadows? You do not act
as if this were so. You do not speak as if this
were so. You are rather angry if reverence is
withdrawn from this word, if there is a hint that
any can be equally dear to him who utters it. In
making your calculations about the doings of
other men or your own, is it not your maxim
that this I is entitled to a primary consideration?
Well! it is this which the Moralist claims for
his investigation. He agrees with you in your
estimate of its importance. He thinks as you
seem to think, that whatever may be the value or
interest of the things which are seen and handled
or tasted or smelt, I who see and handle and taste
1—2
4
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. and smell am at least as interesting to myself as
they can be.'
Not treated
of by the
matical or
lecturer.
Then I should turn to you who frequent class-
Mathe- rooms in which mathematical or physical or phi-
physical lological or historical enquiries are pursued. I
should remind you in each of these rooms there is
a teacher who calls himself I, there are pupils
every one of whom calls himself I. But the I is
to be kept as far as possible from the lines and
angles and parallelograms with which the geome-
trician is occupied. The student who is thinking
of himself will not attend to the propositions of
Euclid. One great object of the teacher in any
branch of physics will be to warn you against the
danger of confusing the objects which you con-
template with notions and prepossessions of your
own. The I is not the subject there, but a dan-
Its import- gerous intruder. Wherever any language is culti-
Philologer. vated, the I cannot be thus forgotten. If you take
up Homer you will find that when he wants to
express the distinction not between Trojans and
Greeks but between both and the horses which
they tame, the dogs which look up to them as
masters, he calls them μépores. Articulate speech
is the characteristic of men. How does the speech
ance to the
become articulate and human? What is the dif-
ference between the cries of beasts or the songs of
birds which Homer must have known intimately,
and the winged words which went forth from the
mouths of his heroes? Each of them called him-
self I. There is the difference, there is the articu-
ON THE WORD 'I'.
5
10
nises its
worth; but
lation. Ascribe that word to a cat or an elephant, LECT. I.
and you are sure that you are in the region of
fable, that the man is imputing to a lower race
that which is the necessary condition of his own.
The philologer is much exercised by the different He recog-
appearances which the I makes in different dia- human
lects; how it hides itself in some amidst the acts cannot in-
vestigate it.
or passions in which it is concerned, how it comes
forth obtrusively in others, as for instance in our
own. He almost suspects that he could detect
various forms of civilisation in this diversity; he
is sure that the scarcely articulate, almost brutal
utterances of the savage are severed from the
organic discourse of educated nations by this fact,
that the one chiefly represents the impressions
which are made on the beholder by the sights, on
the hearer by the sounds of the outward world,
that the others have learnt to rise above these
sights and sounds and to express themselves. But
though he may perceive how this word has pene-
trated into the heart of human speech, though he
recognises it as at once the most universal and the
most exclusive of all words, he cannot look further
into the marvel. He notes it and passes on.
in History.
The student and critic of national or of general Its place
history-or of any historical epoch-finds himself
마
​amidst a world of I's. They perplex him almost
equally by their varieties and by the curious uni-
formity which he discovers in a number of their
acts and movements. Sometimes he is tempted
to resolve all events into the strange irregularities
6
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. eccentricities contradictions of human beings, some-
rian leaves
it to the
Moralist.
times he flies to phrases about the species or the
laws of Nature or Destiny. He is not satisfied
The Histo- with one solution or the other. He knows that
they are both awkward expedients to escape from
a difficulty, attempts to explain the ignotum per
ignotius. He cannot rid himself of the I; what
it means he leaves some other to interpret.
It is to this question, which is left with
such testimonies to its significance, as a waif or
estray by all those who are not afraid to face
other questions, that I believe the student of
Morals must address himself. He ought to explain
why this I is so troublesome to the physical
student, why it casts its shadow over all his
enquiries into the order of the outward world.
He ought to show why it has struck its roots so
deeply into language. He ought to assist the
historian in casting off some of those vague gene-
ralities which obscure the facts that he is describing,
and yet offer themselves to him as such convenient
modes of accounting for them. I do not think that
the moralist can advance a step, can make out any
reason for his existence, unless he girds himself
to this task. And yet no one has more oppor-
tunities for evading it, more hints from illustrious
practitioners of his art how he may evade it.
How the Instead of using the word I, which men use in
their common speech, he may talk about In-
dividuality or Personality. And though, if he is
rudely asked 'what is your personality, what is
Moralist
seeks to
escape from
the con-
sideration
of it.
ON THE WORD 'I'.
7
1
failure.
your individuality?' he may be obliged rather LECT. I.
ignominiously to reply that it is a more philo- His con-
sophical way of saying 'I myself;' he will find so sequent
much comfort in this phraseology—such a grace-
ful plea for it as being a refuge from egotism-
such an apparent justification for it in the neces-
sity of alluding to the mass of human creatures
and not to a single unit of the mass-that the
word I will vanish out of his school dialect,
whilst he is resorting to it every hour, almost
every minute, if he is speaking not as a school-
man but as a man. So the link between the
two characters is broken; his talk is of men, but
that which characterises a man is gone; you
have killed him that you may dissect him.
At whatever risk of appearing egotistical-
even of being so,—at whatever risk of exchanging
grand technical words for common words, such
as men speak in the market-place-we must make
an effort to show that morality means the life
and practice of each person who walks this earth.
and calls himself I, that it is not wrapped up in
theories and speculations about some general
human nature which is no man's particular nature.
Grote's
Egotism.
I alluded in my inaugural lecture to a testimony Professor
of my excellent predecessor upon this subject. plea for
I will now quote his words in full, they exhibit
so strikingly the method which I should wish to
follow in these Lectures. "I send out these
pages," says Mr Grote in the preface to his
Exploratio Philosophica, "with much misgiving,
8
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. not as to the substance of them-all that I can
from the
it.
say about that is that they represent real thought-
and of what value the thought is can only be
seen when it is compared with the thought of
others,—but as to the way in which the manner
or method (if it is to be called method) of them
may be taken. They are full of Egotism. I can
Mischiefs only say that in reading what others have written,
absence of it is a matter continually occurring to me how
much better it would have been if they had been
more egotistic; how much better we should
understand what they meant if they had de-
scribed how the thing had come to present itself to
their minds, and let us see their thoughts a little
in the forming; and also how many pages of
literary history ending at last in an unsatisfactory
result would have been saved if this had been
the case."
Every one who reads this passage, even if he
knows nothing more of the writer, will say that
he could not have been an egotist in the English
sense, nor an egoiste in the French, that he
must have been a man of singular modesty,
with an unusual disposition to be fair and tolerant
towards others, with a zeal for truth which over-
shadowed the desire to be himself the discoverer
or promulgator of it. The egotistical method-he
It implies was too diffident even to give it that name—was
attractive to him precisely because the thought
of one person, if it is really his, calls forth the
thought of another, to resist it, to conspire with
no vanity.
Jor
ON THE WORD 'I'.
9
it, or to complete it. Surely it is so with the LECT. I.
most illustrious men and the least illustrious. No
great man really does his work by imposing his
maxims on his disciples; he evokes their life.
Correggio cries after gazing intently on a picture
of Raffaelle, 'I too am a painter,' not one who
will imitate the great Master, but who will work
a way for himself. The teacher who is ever It provokes
thought in
so poor in talent or information, but who is other men.
determined to speak out the convictions he has
won, who is willing now and then to give some
hint of the struggles through which he has won
them,-leads one or another to say 'I too am
an I.' The pupil may become much wiser than
his instructor, he may not accept his conclusions,
but he will own, 'You awakened me to be myself,
for that I thank you.'
Century.
Mr Grote applied his maxim to what is called The Anti-
Egotists of
Intellectual Philosophy. How important it is for the last
the student of Ethics or Morals I have become
convinced, whilst I have thought over some of
the great writers who devoted themselves to this
study in the last century, and have compared
their influence with that of a philosopher who
preceded them by 2000 years, and whom they
greatly admired. The writers to whom I allude-
they are those whom Sir James Mackintosh and
Dr Whewell have described to us with so much
ability-were men of serious purpose, with a
desire not merely to talk of goodness, but to
produce actual goodness according to their stand-
10
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
miration of
LECT. I. ard of it. They busied themselves with composing
treatises on Human Nature or on Man. They
were emphatically not Egotists. They were not
generally as much interested in the Greek teachers
of Ethics as men of a former generation had been.
They dreaded the return of the influence which
Aristotle had once exercised over Christendom;
they looked upon Plato as a high-flown mystic.
Their ad- But they reverenced Socrates. They believed
Socrates, they could see through the reports of his imagi-
native disciple that he aimed at being real and
practical, that he had, according to the old saying,
brought Philosophy down to the earth. I do not
think that their praises of him were exaggerated,
or that they put these praises on a wrong ground.
But when I ask for the secret of that specially
real and practical character which all ages have
concurred in attributing to Socrates, I find it in his
Egotism. I might give you instances of what I
mean from either of his disciples, but Xenophon's
testimony in this case at least might be more
suspected. He was a soldier and a man of
business; when he speaks of Socrates as practical,
we might fancy he gave his master credit for the
quality which he preferred to all others, and
which he had acquired in the world. If Plato
was the dreamer that some suppose (all will admit
that he was a man of lofty imagination, a born
poet), he might be glad to represent Socrates
as a dweller in the clouds, not as a citizen of the
earth. The passage which I shall choose from
who was
emphati-
cally an
Egotist.
ON THE WORD 'I'.
11
of his
him, is taken from one of his most poetical_LECT. I.
dialogues; it occurs at the beginning of the Pha-
drus. Socrates and Phædrus are sitting near
the spot from which Boreas was reported to have
carried off the nymph Oreithyia. Phædrus wishes Specimen
to know whether his friend accepts that legend as Egotism.
it stands, or adopts one of the physical explana-
tions that had been given of it. Socrates has
heard such explanations; they are ingenious;
he admires the cleverness of those who invented
them. But if he resorts to this kind of interpre-
tation for the story of Boreas, he must treat
Gorgons, Centaurs, Chimeras, after the same
fashion. Such a task would be tedious, intermin-
able. 'And, my friend,' he says, 'I cannot find
leisure for it. I have not yet complied with the
precept of the oracle; I am not yet able to know
myself. It seems to me ridiculous whilst I am in
this ignorance to busy myself with subjects which
lie at a distance from me. Allowing then those
mythological questions to settle themselves as
they may, accepting the ordinary traditions about
them, I devote myself to the question what sort
of creature I myself am, whether I am some wild
beast more composite in its structure, and more
fierce than Typhon, or a gentler animal with a
nature partaking of the noble and the divine.'
cret of his
Here is the Egotist. And here is the practical It is the se-
man we have all heard of. He who could dismiss practical
all questions about Boreas and Oreithyia that he
might settle accounts with himself, that he might
wisdom,
}
12
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. ascertain what he was, might indeed be said
and of
the love
which he
to bring philosophy out of the cloud-land to the
terra firma. That, in the effort to do so, he should
be accused of liking the region into which he was
obliged to travel, cannot surprise us. Nor can we
and hatred Wonder either at the power which he had of
inspired. attracting men, especially young men, to him, or
at the bitter hostility which he provoked. There
is no attraction in general formulas and proposi-
tions; there is an immense charm in one, however
uncouth in his appearance, who can enter into
desires and perplexities which he has first realised
in his own life, and through which he has fought
his way. There is no terror in mere propositions
and formulas; there is great terror in one who
arouses us to remember that which we had
rather forget; he would take from us the Lethe
cup; we may be willing that he should drain the
cup of hemlock.
The geniality of Socrates, his hearty humour,
his appreciation of all the forms of common life,
his habit (indicated so well in the passage I quoted
from Mr Grote) of showing his thought, not
formed, but in the process of formation,-were
Influence nearly wanting in his accomplished panegyrists of
in the the 18th century. And, therefore, all their talent
of Butler and all their desire to be useful could never obtain
and Paley. for them the influence which was exerted by
of Egotism
century
men whom they could often despise for want of
taste, by men whom they could often condemn for
more grievous faults than any against taste,
ON THE WORD 'I'.
13
thodist in
but who had the courage or the audacity to reveal LECT. I.
that which had passed in the inmost sanctuary of
their being. Amongst us the disciples of Wesley The Me-
announced, often in grotesque phrases, often with England.
a mixture of wild and morbid fancies, facts of
which they had become aware, not in the world
without, the world which they saw, but in their
own very selves. The grotesque phrases might be
ridiculed, the morbid fancies might be detected
and exposed by those who were acquainted with
diseases of the body or the mind. But the facts
were recognised by men whose circumstances and
education had been altogether different from those
of the persons who disclosed them; chords which
had been silent in the hearts of refined men
and women responded to the touch sometimes of
very coarse fingers; general moralities were re-
jected as feeble; he who used the Ego was hailed,
for there was an Ego in the hearer.
There was a man who spoke in altogether
different accents from those of the Methodists to
the people of France. Amidst the voices of
philosophers who were listened to with wonder
and delight in the salons of Paris, because they
struck at hypocrisies which were becoming intole-
rable, and did not strike at vices which were
fashionable, there echoed from the hills of Switzer-
land the Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Jean
They were the utterances of a disturbed, even of a Rousseau.
deranged mind; were outrageous in their display
of the writer's evil acts and thoughts; did not
Jacques
14
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I.
his Egotism
spare
the polite society of the day, or the notions
which were popular in it. But in spite of their
strangeness and madness, in spite of the disgust
which they often excited, they had, for Rousseau's
Power of countrymen and strangers, a fascination which was
in France. found in no dogmas however destructive, in no
jests however keen and brilliant. In the most
superficial of all societies there was still a craving
to look below the surface; where men were most
crushed by conventions, there was still a welcome
for any one who could prove that he maintained
an existence, though it might be a very incoherent
existence, under the pressure of them.
Limitation
of these
I quite admit that there is in the English cha-
remarks. racter something which shrinks from both these
forms of egotism, even whilst it gives them
entertainment. The silent, self-contained man
who avoids such exhibitions commands our re-
spect; we have a certain dislike, even contempt, for
the man who relieves himself by whispering his
confessions into the ear of the public, though we
are not unwilling to use our privilege of listening.
The Worth The reserve of such writers as Butler often tells us
more of their characters than any discoveries which
they could make respecting their history. They
hide, under language which concerns the world,
many a struggle which they have gone through in
themselves; slowly we become as much convinced
that a man is speaking to us in these books as if
he admitted us into his closest privacy. If such
reticence were lost from our literature we should
of Reserve.
•
ON THE WORD 'I'.
15
always Reserve
and Egot-
There ism not
incompati-
while ble.
lose much that is most precious in it, much that _LECT. I.
has been ultimately very powerful. If we banished
it from our own characters they would suffer a
more serious injury; the most sacred treasures
would be profaned. That danger should
be remembered when we commend Egotism.
must be some way of escaping these perils
we satisfy Mr Grote's demand, some way of uttering
ourselves without talking about ourselves, some
way of carrying on living communications with
each other, even when we dwell least on our idio-
syncrasies-when our dialect is even less moulded
by our own habits and prepossessions than that of
the philosopher in the last century was.
6
Such a method I have wished to indicate by
taking for the title of my Lecture 'The word I.'
points not
If you must have that I for your subject,' some
one may say, 'why not tell us of the thing, why The Word
give us the mere name of the thing?' I answer, I to a Thing,
cannot call this I a thing; you would all be scan-
dalised by such language. If the I were a thing
I should have nothing to do with it; you would
get your knowledge of it in the rooms where things
are treated of. But, if not a thing, what shall I
say of it?
Am I to allow that it is a mere
abstraction, that it points to no substance? Every
man who is most busy in the affairs of the world
would raise his voice against me if I did that. nor to an
'What! you put this slight upon number one ! tion.
You say that I am a nonentity. What then, pray,
is not a nonentity?' A question which I should
Abstrac-
16
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
The Mys-
tery and
Power of
Words.
LECT. I. find much trouble in answering. If in this per-
plexity I resorted to the phrases Personality or
Individuality, I have told you already what conse-
quences I foresee would follow from that proceeding;
how, after all, I shall be driven to the shame of
giving Iin exchange for those splendid polysyllables.
In despair then of getting a substitute for this
word, I content myself with drawing your attention
to the fact that you do use it, that you must use it
whenever you speak the speech of men. And so I
would lead you to reflect a little on the grandeur
and power of words; of those words which we repeat
most frequently, which we trifle with most. Not
the words which are appropriated to the service of
art and philosophy, which are withdrawn from
Common daily usage, but those which are passing from
sacred hand to hand, those which are the current coin of
every realm, those which are continually liable to
lose their image and superscription from the friction
of society, these are the truly sacred words; in
them lies a wealth of meaning which each
age has
helped to extract, but which will contain something
for every fresh digger. The word I, with its
property of being demanded by a whole community,
and yet being only capable of denoting a single
unit, is a key to that mystery in words which
makes them interpreters of the life of individuals,
of nations, of ages; the discoveries of that which
we have in common, the witnesses of that in each
man which he cannot impart, which his fellows
may guess at, but which they will never know.
words the
words.
ON THE WORD 'I'.
17
of words
tes.
This use of common speech was understood by LECT. I.
Socrates; it enabled him to detect a number of Treatment
tricks which the young men of Athens, in their by Socra-
zeal to make words serve the purposes of persua-
sion, were practising upon themselves; it enabled
him to bring to light a multitude of thoughts
and convictions that were lying in them crushed
under the weight of customary and traditional
notions, or of the vanity which aspired to catch at
the newest and most paradoxical notions. If he
could persuade them to account to themselves for
the force which they were giving to words, if he
could shew them what force lay in words which
they did not recognise, he would teach them to
reverence an inheritance which had come to them
from their fathers, and at the same time to feel
that unless they reduced it into possession it might
become their burthen and their curse. In no way
had he so much learnt to fulfil the oracle 'Know
thyself,' as by reflecting on the words which were
continually passing from his lips; in no way
could he so effectually stir his pupils to obey
the same oracle as by leading them to cultivate
the like habit. Often, no doubt, he was betrayed His me-
into extravagances and puerilities by his passion to correc-
for etymology. If we would observe carefully not obso-
how men of the old world fell into that temptation,
if we would faithfully use any lights which phi-
lology or experience have supplied to preserve
us from it, modern students might have a great
advantage over the ancient. But they often, it
thod open
tion but
lete.
2
18
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
ion that we
what sense
we please
LECT. I. seems to me, turn their dread of what they de-
scribe as verbal quibbles to a mischievous purpose.
The opin- They refuse to recognise any life in words; they
may put quote Horace as an authority that it is only usage
which confers any value upon them. I wish they
would consider that passage in the Ars Poetica
which they claim in support of their doctrine.
Horace illustrates by a beautiful analogy from
Nature the changes which words may undergo in
different periods:
on words
Ut silvæ foliis pronos mutantur in annos
Prima cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit ætas
Et juvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque.
He recognised a winter and a spring, a decay and
a renewal for words. The usage therefore
Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi
can never mean the fashion which makes a word
bear a certain impress without reference to its
not sanc origin or history. He says that Virgil and Va-
rius could renovate and adapt to their own time
words of Ennius and Cato which had become
rusty, that
tioned by
Horace.
Licuit semperque licebit
Signatum præsente nota producere nomen.
Take the other course, and we may produce a phi-
losophical slang, or a slang of any other kind; but
we shall debase the language of our fathers, and
make it useless for the education of our sons.
There is one class of words which especially
ON THE WORD 'I'.
19
which
indicate a
rebels against arbitrary definition, and which LECT. I.
may be especially profitable for the end that The words
Socrates proposed to himself. I mean such words seem to
as 'Consciousness' and 'Conscience.' There are a double self.
multitude more which we discover by degrees to be
of the same kind and to point in the same direction
as these; but these are centres from which light
falls upon the rest. They are inseparably con-
nected with that pronoun of which I have been
speaking in this lecture. Take away the I from
language, and they must disappear also. There is
no demand for them in any of the things which
I see or taste or handle. They come into existence
only because there is an I who sees, tastes, handles.
Were there no such words, the Delphic oracle
which Socrates tried to obey would seem the most
ridiculous ever uttered. How can I know myself?
Are there two creatures then, I and myself? It
does sound monstrous. But, monstrous or not,
these words involve that duplicity, they associate
it with all my acts and thoughts, they remind
me that I am stooping to the condition of a brute,
not asserting my rights as a man, if I disavow it.
For they are not words which belong to the
inarticulate nomenclature of the savage; they
are like the I, characteristic portions of organic
civilised language; they appear in the discourses Impor-
which have exercised most influence over bodies
of men, as well as in those which discover the
fears, conflicts, hopes that belong to the secret
chamber.
tance of
these
words.
2—-2
20
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. They are full of difficulty, full of apparent con-
tradiction. Yet I must grapple with them at once
if I pursue the course which I have marked out
for myself. I have proposed to treat of Casuistry.
Casuistry Now the subject of Casuistry is the Conscience.
with them. The illustrious man who thirty years ago restored
is occupied
why useful
for this
age.
this chair to dignity and efficiency, and began to
endow it with some of his vast intellectual trea-
sures, abandoned that title for his lectures, deem-
ing Moral Philosophy a more suitable one in this
age. The Conscience therefore was only one of
the subjects which he had to examine; he could
deliberate where he should introduce it into his
system. But whilst I yield the greatest weight to
his arguments as well as to his authority—whilst
Casuistry I entirely accede to his doctrine that the intentions
of founders may often best be fulfilled by a depar-
ture from the letter of their instructions, whilst I
have no doubt that the main duty of a teacher is to
consider how he may meet the requirements of his
own generation-I am led by these very maxims
to accept the term which Dr Knightbridge chose
for his professorship, as denoting the first division
of Moral Science. I have told you in this lecture
that I dread the temptation to lay down a general
scheme of morals or of human nature. The ex-
amples of eminent men in former days who have
adopted that course the craving for facts the im-
patience of mere opinion, which I welcome as some
of the most hopeful signs of our time,―alike lead
me to desire, as my immediate predecessor did, a
ON THE WORD 'I'.
21
more egotistical kind of study. Casuistry, it seems LECT. I.
to me, is such a study. It brings us face to face
with the internal life of each one of us. The
world without, it leaves to the examination of
other enquirers. The Casuist's business is with
him who looks into that world, who receives im-
pressions from it, and compels it to receive im-
pressions from him.
Egotist
modern
There is a writer of the eighteenth century- Fichte the
he lived into the nineteenth-who was singularly among
unlike those anti-egotists of whom I spoke, one philoso-
who more than any philosopher since Socrates phers.
took the question, "What am I?" as the subject
of his thoughts. I should not introduce him here
if some of his books had not been set down in the
list of those in which students for the Moral
Sciences Tripos are to be examined. That being
the case I wish that you should know the man
better than his books; for he deserves to be known
better; his books are valuable chiefly as they help
us to know him. I may not have occasion to
refer again in any part of this course to Johann
Gottlieb Fichte; but to this present lecture he
specially belongs. He will shew you that an
Egotist, in Mr Grote's sense of the word, may be
a very brave and noble man, one of the sternest
antagonists of that egotism which we ought all to
hate.
education.
Fichte was a poor man, one however who con- Fichte's
trived to obtain a higher culture than rich men
generally enjoy; he went to Switzerland and be-
22
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. came a teacher of boys. In that occupation he
discovered what seemed to him the secret of all
philosophy.
Tenny-
son's In
Memoriam,
XLIV.
What
learning is
Some admirable lines of our own poet very
appropriate to my present subject, will tell you
how that secret was brought home to him.
The Baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that this is I:
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of 'I' and 'me',
And finds I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.
So rounds he to a separate mind,
From whence clear memory may begin,
As through the frame that bounds him in,
His isolation grows defined.
Well, Fichte's lot was cast among those who
without a were thus learning the use of the I and the Me.
man who
learns. He did not adopt a theory about the Ego in him-
self, and the Ego in his pupil; he found that one
responded to the other. There was no learning if
there was no such communication; the name signi-
fied nothing. A vast amount of what was called
learning existed in Germany, philosophical specu-
lation without end, heaps of information that
could not be measured. But the speculator, what
was he? who was informed by all that informa-
The scho- tion? Fichte believed that the vocation of the
lar's voca-
tion. scholar must be something different from that
ON THE WORD 'I'.
23
which the German schoolmen were dreaming of; LECT. I.
he believed it must be connected with the voca-
tion of a man.
of men.
to be a
And now there rose a cry beginning in France, The rights
spreading through Europe, about the Rights of
Men. The ears of the schoolmaster opened to
that cry; it met cries which had been in his own
heart long before. He liked it better because it
rose from hovels, not palaces or colleges. But was
each of these men claiming his rights? Had The right
they not been reduced into a dead mass of ani- man.
mals; were they not now feeling their animal
power and trying to put that forth for the destruc-
tion of those who had not recognised them as
men? Must not the scholar's vocation be to give
as many as he could the sense of their right to be
men; their right not to be lost in a crowd; their
right to be each verily and indeed an I? For
this end and in this spirit Fichte worked in Ger-
many. But against what enemies! The issue of
the cry for right had been the domination of an
emperor. The great Bourbon had said, The State,
it is I. Napoleon trampling on the Bourbons The Napo-
said, The Republic, it is I. He said that not
only in his own land. Austria and Prussia bowed
before him; the country which Rome could not
conquer crawled at his feet. In Jena, Fichte had
proclaimed that no tyrant can bind him who does
not bind himself. In Jena, it was shewn that
Prussia had bound herself, and therefore that no
army such as Frederic had bequeathed to her
leonic I.
24
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. could save her from being the bondsman of the
The pro- foreigner. There were none so hateful to Napoleon
Freedom. as the scholars of any land which he subdued;
phet of
that is to say if they cared for men; he was
willing to patronise them if they would only speak
of things. It was specially perilous for any one
to maintain the ground which Fichte had taken up.
But he never flinched. The hymn of freedom and
of its future victory,
Unawed he sung amidst a slavish band,
till the slaves began to shake their fetters and
to believe that there might be a deliverance from
them. The men of Fichte's own class awoke
first. In the lowest depression of Prussia they
established the University of Berlin, as the Dutch
had established the University of Leyden during
their struggle with Philip II. Then came an
army born of the new craving for liberty. The
military arrangements of Frederic were gone; a
Spirit came to take their place. Fichte would
have gone forth to the battle; his monarch com-
manded him to stay in the city and do his
country's work there. He lifted his voice to de-
nounce the compromises which Austria tempted
His oppor- Prussia to make. He heard that the last French-
man had crossed the Rhine. He was saved
from seeing the disappointment of his hopes from
Germany, the degradation which it had to un-
dergo from those who now claimed to be its
emancipators. His wife, whom he had loved
tune death.
ON THE WORD 'I'.
25
from his youth up, nursing the wounded in the LECT. I.
hospitals, took a fever. He caught it from her
lips and died.
between
and his
I have told you nothing of Fichte's system. Difference
I mean to tell you nothing. When he spoke of the Man
that which had become a part of his life, of his System.
very self, he seems to me a grand teacher; when
he tried to speak of that which was not him-
self, or to put himself and the universe into a
set of formulas, I lose sight of him. I am glad
to know that opponents rose up to vindicate what
he disparaged. I am glad to believe that he was
restless within the walls which he had raised
around him. He belongs, as I said, emphatically
to my opening Lecture for this reason. I wanted
not only to give you an example of a great egotist;
but to shew you why I have pleaded for egotism.
It is that each of us may reverence his own life and
the life of his fellow-man above all theories that any
have formed about him or them. It is that we may Use of
study the problems of life seriously and truthfully, example
whether we can make out a theory about them
or no. It is that in studying these problems we
may profit by the lessons of those with whose
dogmas or conclusions we may the least agree.
When I speak of the Conscience I shall not turn to
Fichte. I think our English writers will give us
more light on that subject. But I doubt whether in the
we shall be able to use that light, coming to us English
as it does in many broken rays, if we do not take
our stand upon that ground to which Fichte was
Fichte's
study of
Moralists.
26
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. I. led by his stern experiences. Think of the word I,
and you will be able to enter upon the study of
the word Conscience with some hope of a satisfac-
tory result.
How an
able teach-
er who
aims at
System of
Morals
may assist
tem.
I have alluded to one deviation which I am
making from the course that was marked out
making a by Dr Whewell. What I have just said-indeed
the whole of this Lecture-will indicate another,
those who it may seem to some a more striking difference,
dread Sys from him.
He avowedly endeavoured to con-
struct a system of Morality. I have declared
that I have no such object, that I shall even strive
diligently against the wish to pursue such an ob-
ject. I am not the less rejoiced that he made the
attempt, and made it with his characteristic vigour
and courage, because I do not aspire to imitate
it. He has added very much to the stores of
our moral experience, and whilst pleading for
System, he has furnished us with a series of
warnings against the perils of System such as no
one could have given who did not bring to the
study of Morals a great knowledge of physics
and the methods of physical investigation. These
warnings I hope never to forget. He has urged
us to see in familiar words the recognition of per-
manent and imperishable truths; he has bidden us
not be content with the current notions of these
words, but carefully sift them that we may discover
their radical force; he would have us proceed step
by step in our enquiries; he says we must not
allow affected respect for feelings and emotions to
ON THE WORD 'I'.
27
of the Mo-
be an excuse for vague undigested thoughts. In LECT. I.
the second of his lectures on Systematic Morality The sphere
he asserts with great force and eloquence the ralist.
maxims which I have been trying to maintain
this morning, that the moral student is as much
occupied with realities as the physical student,
and that he has as wide a field to examine. 'He Whewell
on System-
has' (I must quote his words, for I would gladly atic Moral-
take them as the motto for this Course of Lec-ity, P. 48.
tures) 'for his region of thought everything about
which other men think most eagerly, all that
occupies the mind of the historian, the poet,
the tragedian, the comedian, the advocate, the
statesman, the poor, the rich, the recluse, the
man of the world; he has to consider not only
all the means which they have to gain their pur-
poses; but he has also to weigh their purposes
against each other; to compare the ends of life
according to each view; to decide how far each
lies in the road to the far end, the true aim of
human life....For the microcosm, the little world
of man, is really not less than the macrocosm, the
great world of Nature.'
LECTURE II.
THE WORD CONSCIENCE'.
LECT. II. MANY definitions of the Conscience are to be found
The ques-
in books of Philosophers, many accounts of its
tion what
Conscience operations. We may consider some of these in
the vulgar due time. I should be sorry to neglect them, for
means in
tongue
portant
more im- each thoughtful man will supply some hint which
than what may make our thoughts clearer. But, as I said in
in learned my last Lecture, we must begin with asking our-
it means
books.
selves what meaning we have given to the word
and do give it in our ordinary discourse. We are
using it on the most vulgar occasions. We say
that a tradesman who sends in an extravagant bill,
or adulterates the food which he sells, has no
conscience. And yet we do not really admit that
he or any man is without a conscience. We appeal
to it as if we thought it was in him, and could
respond to the demand we make upon it.
I observed in my last lecture that the adjec-
tive Conscious is inseparably connected with the
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
29
scious of
sounds, or
word I. Nothing, I said, which we taste or smell LECT. II.
or handle would suggest it to us. I am conscious I am con-
of the taste of the orange or the smell of the rose. sights,
I never dream that the orange or the rose is con- tastes.
scious. I know with myself what impression I have
received from the rose or the orange. The differ-
ence of the effect of sights or scents on different
men or women, as on different classes of animals,
may depend on peculiarities of their bodily struc-
ture; but when you have taken all account of these,
if you understand them ever so perfectly, you will
have to say at last, 'It is I to whom the pleasure
or the pain comes which is brought to me through
any sense.' If I were not there the words pain
and pleasure would carry no signification with
them. I can only tell anything about either,
because I am conscious of it.
scious of
of proposi-
Dr Whewell remarks that the word conscious I am con-
has been far too much restricted by some moralists; the truth
that I have a right to say, 'I am conscious that tions.
two straight lines cannot enclose a space.' As-
suredly if I am not conscious of that truth it is not
one for me; I have taken no hold of it. And yet
we all feel that in general we are adopting a pom-
pous and unnecessary phraseology if we intro-
duce the word conscious in either of these cases.
It is enough to say, and therefore it is better to
say, 'I taste or smell,' than 'I am conscious of a
taste or smell.' Dr Whewell would not have been
pleased with any pupil in his Mathematical Class
Room who, instead of repeating the postulate as
30
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. his fathers did before him, improved it by speak-
When this
word be-
comes ne-
cessary.
sciousness
awful.
ing of certain internal convictions which he had
about it.
But there are some cases in which we cannot
dispense with the word, in which none other would
serve us so well. Edipus meets Laius on a cross
road going to Thebes. There is an encounter.
Laius is slain. Is Edipus conscious of what he
has done? Of course he knows that he has killed
a man who would have killed him. He meant to
do that. But is he conscious-does he know with
himself what sort of act he has done: is he aware
that he is a parricide? The story which the genius
of Sophocles has so wonderfully unfolded is the
story of the awakening of this Consciousness,
of the discovery to Edipus of what he has done,
of what he is. And this Consciousness is fresh and
alive years after, when he himself is a father and
a king. The act done so long ago is with him
then. It has become a part of his own existence.
It seems
The moment I pass from the consideration of
the things with which I have to do to the consider-
ation of that which I am, this problem confronts
The Con- me; it is this conscience which binds the differ-
which is ent parts of my existence together, which assures
me that the past still belongs to me.
very terrible.
But banish it, and there is no
drama, no biography, no history: human existence
becomes the dreariest blank; men only brutal.
There is, however, a Consciousness which is not
grand or terrible, which we are wont to connect
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
31
sciousness
with what is petty and ridiculous. We say about LECT. II.
some picture of a man or woman or child, How
self-conscious he or she is! We mean that the The Con-
person has been thinking what attitudes would be which is
most becoming; how it would be best to appear trivial.
when other people should see the likeness. This
way of knowing one's self we pronounce very disa-
greeable, and worse than disagreeable; it implies
insincerity, and must lead to greater insincerity.
6
vain and
We certainly do not mean this, or anything
approaching to this, when we speak of a conscientious
man. Not this, even the reverse of this. And yet
we do suppose the conscientious man in some sense
to take account of himself, to be aware of what
he is doing. We do not always use the epithet
'conscientious' as one of strong commendation.
We may not like the person on whom we bestow
it. There may be something like a sneer or a curl
of the lip when we observe That man is always
thinking what he ought to do or ought not to do.'
Such surly judgments, hastily thrown off, are often
of great value. They indicate, better than formal
explanations, what force we give to the words How we
which we utter most frequently and familiarly. popular
I am not sure that if we sought long we should of the Con-
find a more exact account of a conscientious man
than this, He is one who is always considering
what he ought or ought not to do; or whether
there is a more exact description of the Con-
science than this, It is that in me which says, I
ought or I ought not.
may get a
definition
science.
32
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II.
lar defini-
tion a
strict and
available
one.
If we adhere strictly to this expression on
which we have stumbled, we shall be able to
recognize a fact which is of quite infinite im-
This popu-portance to us. We shall clear away diffi-
culties which eminent men have created in their
eagerness to magnify the conscience, as well as
objections which other eminent men have raised
against the acknowledgment of it. The fact is
this. However we may account for it each of us
does say 'I ought' and 'I ought not.' We can-
not weed those expressions out of our dialect or
out of the dialect of any civilised nation. Like
the word I they have established themselves in
language; it could not exist without them. How
is that? Do you think it would be so if we could
exist without them, if the I and the ought had not
some very close affinity? We need not perplex
ourselves with the question how soon a child
The I and begins to say I ought. We know it does not at
first say
I. It describes itself in the third person.
It learns, some tell us, to say I by imitating those
who are around it. Be it so; that may be the
way in which it acquires the sound. The question
for practical people is, what the sound signifies to
the child. What is imitated in the use of the
word? To what account does the little mimic
turn its new possession? And so about the ought.
That sound may also be caught from neighbours
old or young. When caught how does it work?
Is it a disease which can be cured by certain skil-
ful medicines, or is it to be cherished as necessary
the ought
insepara-
ble.
Does
imitation
account
for either?
THE WORD CONSCIENCE'.
33
to health and life. At all events, however you
may have come by the word frankly own to your-
selves, each of you, that you have it; that you
cannot part with it. You must use it to denote
your desire to be rid of it. You must say 'I
ought not to be troubled with this ought.'
LECT. II.
Conscience
because I
scious.
And steadily remember that the I and the
ought are twin words. Like the Siamese twins,
they are not without violence or risk of death to be
severed from each other. I impress that remark
upon you because it will save you many confusions
hereafter if you thoroughly take it in. I said I impute a
that you complained of the want of conscience in to another
the shopkeeper who charged you more than you am con-
thought was reasonable for articles you had pur-
chased of him. You ascribe a conscience to him
because he calls himself I, just as you do. And
you cannot suppose that he is like you in that
respect without supposing that like you he says
to himself 'I ought and I ought not.' But I am
only conscious of that which passes in myself;
as he is only conscious of that which passes in
himself. There is no doubt in some persons a
very wonderful apprehension and divination of
that which others are thinking, imagining, pur-
posing. Those who really have that gift,-who
do not merely fancy they have it and make all
kinds of false, suspicious, and illnatured guesses
about their neighbours-we call men and women
of genius. Sympathy has much to do with genius,
perhaps is the essence of it. But it cannot
3
34
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. exist, I apprehend, except in a person who has
I cannot a lively consciousness of what is passing in him.
transfer
my Con- He is awake to that, and so can make more
sciousness
to another. than a guess at what is passing in me.
I can only
call it forth
in him.
This
divination therefore does not interfere with my
maxim or even offer an exception to it. The
act of conscience is an act in me. It means 'I
ought or I ought not.' I may pass judgment on
other men's acts; but that is another process ;
I am abusing terms and what the terms represent
if I identify it with the Conscience.
Perhaps you will say to me 'What if I see
my friend pursuing a course of conduct which
I am sure will ruin him, is it not my conscience
which bids me warn him of his danger, though I
know he may quarrel with me, even hate me for
doing so?' Yes, I fully admit that it is your
conscience which bids you warn your friend. What
I affirm is, that the conscience does bid you, and
no one else. When you speak to him you try to
arouse his conscience. You will effect nothing
for him unless you arouse it. And therefore it
is of great practical importance to remember
the distinction which I have drawn. Many hard
pharisaical censures, which lead to no result, are
the consequences of our forgetting it, as well as
the omission of many counsels which would benefit
our neighbours because they would be the fruit
of our experience of ourselves.
And thus another perplexity may be taken
out of our way.
'What must we call the Con-
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE”.
35
science a
science? Is it a special faculty? Is it a faculty in LECT. II.
all men or only in some men?' Butler describes Is the con-
it as a faculty of human nature. Dr Whewell Faculty?
demurs; it is according to him only an exercise of
the Reason. Which opinion are we to adopt?
Faculty?
Just because I hold the fact of the existence
of a conscience to be one in which each of us
is deeply and practically interested, I decline to
enter into these controversies between learned
men. If I called the conscience a faculty, I am
not at all sure that I should understand my own
meaning; I certainly should have no right to ex-
pect you to understand me. A faculty should from What is a
its derivation have reference to doing; when we
speak of a man of considerable faculty, we under-
stand one who can readily turn his hand to any
work which is committed to him. There is
nothing in the 'ought' or 'ought not' of the con-
scientious man which intimates that he has any
peculiar capacity of doing. I do not think that
I remove the objection or gain any additional
clearness by introducing the words, our nature or
our mind. I rather incur the risk of losing that
which I have dwelt on as most characteristic of
the word Conscience, its adherence to the sin-
gular pronoun. And as I have not yet tried
to explain what I mean by Nature or Mind or
Reason-supposing I am able hereafter to offer
any such explanations-it would be very much
out of order to thrust in such phrases, as if
we knew all about them at the outset of our
3-2
36
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
Human
Nature.
cannot
it.
LECT. II. inquiry. It was almost inevitable that Butler,
Butler's following that method of which I spoke in my
last lecture, should begin with assuming Human
Nature as the basis of his remarks on the Con-
science. He has behaved with perfect honesty.
He has been at great pains to explain what Hu-
man Nature signifies and does not signify, in his
acceptation of it. We owe him much gratitude
for this service. Whether we are satisfied with the
explanation or not, it throws light upon a number
of difficult points which may come under our
Why we notice in future lectures. But that egotistical
start from rule which I am trying to follow does not allow
me to meddle with any of these problems at
present. According to that rule the question,
What am I, takes precedence of all that con-
cern my or our nature; if so, it will also take
precedence of all questions about my mind or
our mind, my reason or our reason. We are
not then in a condition to decide whether Butler
is right, or Dr Whewell is right, or whether both
are wrong, or whether there is some way of
reconciling them, so that neither may be wrong.
But we may thankfully accept their joint testi-
mony in support of a fact which each of them had
realized in himself, and which each of us may
realize in himself.
The ques-
tion;
Whose
I am not the least afraid of bringing the ques-
Conscience tion whether there is a conscience to this test.
I am only afraid lest our decision about it should
be embarrassed by the introduction of other
do you
mean?
How treat-
ed
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
37
questions to which the test cannot be applied. LECT. II.
If I am told there is a Conscience in human
Nature, I begin to ask whether there are not the
widest conceivable differences between the persons
to whom this Nature is attributed, and whether
what is true about one, may not be untrue about
another. Especially when this Conscience is
credited as it is by Butler with the grandest
functions, when it is appealed to as the highest
of all authorities, the question will suggest itself,
Do you say that of every man's Conscience, or of
some particularly exalted Conscience? Dr Whe-
well was aware that Butler had laid himself open
to cavils of this kind. He tried to avoid them.
"We cannot," he said, "properly refer to our Con- (a) by Dr
sciences as to an ultimate and supreme autho-
rity. It has only a subordinate and intermediate
"authority standing between the supreme law to
“which it is bound to conform, and our own
"actions which must conform to it, in order to be
'moral." He adds a little further on, "as the
66
((
66
object of reason is to determine what is true, so
"the object of Conscience is to determine what is
"right. As each man's reason may err, and so
"lead himself to a false opinion, so each man's
"conscience may err, and lead him to a false moral
“standard. As false opinion does not disprove
"the reality of truth, so the false moral standards
"of men do not disprove the reality of a supreme
"law of rule of human action'.
1 "
1 Elements of Morality, Vol. I. p. 161, 2nd Ed.
Whewell,
38
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II.
(b) by Mr
Bain.
tion to a
Con-
This language is moderate and cautious; yet
it has provoked a criticism which I will read to
you from the 15th chapter of Mr Bain's volume
on the Emotions and Will.
66
"What then," asks Mr Bain, "is this stand-
"ard? Where is it to be found ? Until it is
produced we have nothing to discuss, affirm, or
His objec- "deny. Is it some model conscience like Aristo-
standard "tle's serious man (o σroudaios), or is it the decision
science. "of a public body authorised to decide for the
"rest of the community? We have no difficulty
"in deciding what is the standard of truth in most
"other matters, but what is the standard con-
"science? That must be got at, or morality is
"not a subject to be reasoned or written about."
"Dr Whewell (he continues) appears to pre-
sume the existence of certain moral ideas with-
"out reference to any individual mind whatever,
"concerning every one, and yet originating with
"no one. He sets up for morality a standard
"having a degree of independent existence, such
"as hardly can be conceived, and which does not
How other "exist with reference to anything else. We have
standards "standards of length, of measure, of weight, which
even although embodied in material objects, can
"hardly be said to have the independence here
"contended for. In constructing the imperial yard,
Authority "gallon, or pound weight, a certain number of
ing bodies persons concur in adopting a definite unit, and
these persons being either themselves the govern-
"ing body of the nation, or being followed by
are esta-
blished.
66
of govern- (6
and men of
Science.
66
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
39
to abstract
ble powers.
"the actual governing body, give the law or so LECT. II.
"dictate the standard for themselves and all others.
"It is quite true that individuality is controlled
"or overruled in this matter, but not by any
"abstract, unseen, unproducible power. It is one Objection
"portion of the community agreeing upon a cer- unproduci-
"tain choice and the rest falling in with that.
"Every dealer must bring his weights and mea-
"sures to be tried by the authoritative standard,
"but he is at no loss to say who are the authors
66 'and maintainers of that standard. So with Time.
"When we are called upon to adapt our watches
"to Greenwich time, it is not a standard be-
"yond humanity. The collective body of astro-
"nomers have agreed upon a mode of reckoning
"founded upon the still more general recognition
"of the solar day as the principal unit. At
"Greenwich Observatory, observations are made
which determine the standard of this country ;
"and the population in accepting that standard
"know or may know that they are following the
"Astronomer Royal with his staff, and the body
"of astronomers generally." pp. 291, 292.
66
Whether these illustrations from pounds, gal-
lons, and watches, confute or confirm the doctrine
of an immutable moral standard which Dr Whewell
asserted-whether the arguments from the weight
of tradition, of professional observers, of mere
numbers, tend to prove the impossibility or the
necessity of such a standard,-whether Mr Bain is
himself less or more chargeable than Dr Whewell
40
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. with appealing in his treatment of the Conscience
Difficulty to "an abstract, unseen, unproducible power,"-
if we as-
a partial
in the Con-
science.
sume even are questions which may all come before us in due
authority time; the last I shall have to consider in the
next lecture. Here I am constrained to admit that
even a statement so qualified, as that in the
Elements of Morality, does lay the author of it
open to the charge of imputing an indefinite
authority to the Conscience, while we are not told
in what particular person it dwells. But now
supposing that I ought and I ought not,' are
the formulas of the Conscience, does it strike you
that we must produce a model Conscience before
we can affirm that each of us so far as he is an I
If the Con- uses those formulas? Of course Mr Bain is at
means I full liberty to say 'I decline to reason or write
about your doctrine of a Conscience, unless you
do that.' No British subject is compelled to write
or reason about a subject except on his own terms.
But if the point to be ascertained is whether
that which I call a fact is a fact or a fiction, one
would fancy that the vulgarest specimen of our
race would supply a much better test than some
person of rare excellence. After thinking much
who might serve the purpose of an experiment
most effectually, I can remember no one whom
on the whole I should prefer to Mr Tennyson's
Northern Farmer.
science
ought'
the vul-
garest in-
stance is
the best.
The
You will not complain, I hope, that he is a
Northern fictitious character. He is real enough. He is
very strictly an individual. Yet he could not
Farmer.
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
41
have been described to us by any writer who LECT. II.
had not taken a careful observation of his class.
We at once recognise him as a member of our
own tribe; an Englishman to the very bone; one
whose brutality we cannot put at a distance from
us and ascribe to any people as being more cha-
racteristic of them than of us; one who has a
manliness breaking through the brutality, which
as patriots we may think is also not uncongenial
to our soil. There is no doubt about the lower His bru-
tality and
stratum. The tastes of the northern farmer are humanity.
altogether animal; he has no dream of what Mr
Arnold would call culture; his thoughts about what
will become of himself when he leaves the world, or
how the world will go on without him, are equally
bewildered; his moral standard has certainly not
been fixed by any body of men answering to those
who have determined so satisfactorily the standard
for the gallon or the time-piece. How is it that
one who has all these tendencies and inclinations
can be a subject for art, that we are able to con-
template him without utter disgust? A Conscience Tokens
is there. We are not in the presence of a mere science.
drinker of 'yäale.' Even about that there is a rule
from which he cannot depart. And he has stubbed
Thorneby waste, because he has a duty to the land.
He has gone to church Sunday after Sunday, not
because he understands what the parson has said,
but because the parson, being a parson, ought to
say it, and he ought as farmer to hear. He has
too a sense of having done something which he
of a Con-
42
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. ought not to have done. He thinks he may have
Every-
thing in
this poem
upon the
depends
ought.
It is the
same in
er instance.
made compensation for his wrong doing; but he
is not at ease about it. He recurs to it, tries to
balance it against good deeds. An I is there; the
past cannot be left behind; it is with him on his
death-bed. We have encountered a man like our-
selves in his degradation and his dignity. The
strength which we disguise under flattering phrases
about Anglo-Saxon muscle and toughness lies in
the 'owt'. That rises out of the coarse nature of
the farmer as out of a prison-house or a grave.
But it is the same which spoke forth clearly, musi-
every high- cally, effectually in Christopher Columbus, when he
determined that he ought to cling to his belief in
a new Continent if all the wise heads in Europe
derided him, if all the crowned heads trifled with
him; in Martin Luther, when he said that he
ought to go forward to the Diet though there was
as many devils in Worms as there were tiles on
the houses; in John Hampden, when he said that
he ought not to pay the forty shilling tax of ship-
money, if the resistance to it involved him in
ruin, even if it ended in a civil war for his country.
How different the standard of any one of these
men was from that of the Northern farmer, I need
not stop to explain; how different the sense in
each of the power which could enable him to
follow that standard. But the Conscience of an
obligation, involving some effort, endurance, sacri-
fice, dwelt in them all; the presence of this
light is most conspicuous in the farmer from
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
43
the darkness of the ground which throws it LECT. II.
back.
dant to this
Greek.
But can we find no picture which stands in The pen-
direct contrast to this one, and which may teach us portrait.
what the effect on a man would be if the Con-
science were not eliminated from it, but reduced
to the smallest possible force and vitality? Modern
literature in this case also is most helpful. You
know the story of Romola probably better than
I do. You will remember therefore the full-length The refined
and admirable portrait of the young Greek Tito.
With a perception of all sensual delights as exqui-
site as ever belonged to his race when it was in
the fullness of its glory, with the accomplishments
which made it the teacher of Western Europe in
the 15th century, with energy for all the intellec-
tual pursuits which were so dear to the Italians of
that day, failing in no subtlety of mind or grace
of person or aptitude for affairs, able to attract the
admiration of the wisest statists, and to win the
heart of the noblest woman, what is there deficient
in this man? This only. The words 'I ought' and
'I ought not' have vanished from a vocabulary rich
in the spoils of all languages, capable of expressing
every delicate and refined apprehension. That
is his one want, and for that—it is a victory of
genius for which we cannot be too thankful-the
authoress of Romola has compelled us to regard
him with a contempt and a loathing which it is
impossible to entertain for the Northern Farmer.
This character also I dare not call fictitious.
·
44
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. It is true in all its essentials, even in its details.
His maxim The maxim of Tito, Seek all the pleasure you
of life
cepted in
modern
widely ac- can get, avoid all the pain,' is the maxim on which
thousands of young men in England, with or with-
England. out the refinement of the Greek, are trying to
Rejection
of it in the
an English
pher.
act. Most of them trouble themselves little about
philosophy. There are some who think that they
can plead the authority and sustain themselves by
the arguments of an eminent philosopher, not a
Greek, but an Englishman; not of the 15th cen-
tury, but of the 19th. Of him I must say a
few words.
Mr Jeremy Bentham was, I should imagine,
practice of more utterly unlike Tito in his conception of the
Philoso- purpose for which he existed than even the
Northern Farmer. He scorned delights and lived
laborious days. Instead of devoting himself to
the luxury either of a sensual or an intellectual
life, he toiled for the improvement of prison
discipline, for the overthrow of prejudices about
transactions between the lender and the borrower,
for the removal of abuses in various departments of
legal administration. With great eagerness for the
assertion of a general theory, he never excused him-
self from the trouble of entering into the minutia.
of practice. The greatest happiness of the greatest
number was his watchword; he showed that he
sincerely valued this object above all his private
interests. He was, moreover, thoroughly an I.
He defied public opinion in his opinions, and in
his mode of presenting and enforcing his opinions.
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
45
He worked on in his own way; severe, even fierce, LECT. II.
in his censures and contempt of that which he
supposed to be mischievous and foolish; resolute
in his assertion of what he believed to be useful
and logical.
tion of it in
trine.
What possible plea can those who have adopted Justifica-
the Tito scheme of life find for claiming Mr his doc-
Bentham as their ally? The smallest plea ima-
ginable if they studied his example, and tried to
frame themselves upon that; a very tolerable plea,
I think you will admit, when they read these
opening passages of his Principles of Morals and
Legislation.
and Pain
ters.
"Nature has placed mankind under the go- Pleasure
"vernment of two sovereign masters, Pain and our Mas-
"Pleasure. It is for them alone to point out
"what we ought to do, as well as to determine
'what we shall do. On the one hand, the stand-
"ard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of
"causes and effects, are fastened to this throne.
66
They govern us in all we say, in all we do, in
"all we think; every effort we make to throw
"off our subjection to them, will serve but to
"demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man
may pretend to abjure this empire, but in reality
"he will remain subject to it all the while."
"The principle of Utility recognizes this sub-
"jection, and assumes it for the foundation of that
system, the object of which is to rear the fabric
"of felicity by the hands of reason and of law.
"Systems which attempt to question it, deal with
46
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. "sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of
66
reason, in darkness instead of light.
Every sys-
tem which
66
own their
nonsensi-
cal.
66
66
66
66
*
*
*
*
"The principle of Utility is the foundation
does not "of the present work; it will be proper there-
supremacy "fore at the outset to give an explicit and de-
"terminate account of what is meant of it. By
"the principle of Utility is meant the principle
'which approves or disapproves of every action
whatsoever, according to the tendency which it
appears to have to augment or diminish the
happiness of the party whose interest is in ques-
"tion; or, what is the same thing in other words,
"to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say
"of every action whatsoever, and therefore not
only of every action of a private individual, but
Pleasure, "of every measure of government. By Utility
Happiness, "is meant that property in any object, whereby
"it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure,
Good,
synony-
mous ex-
pressions.
Definition
of a Com-
munity.
66
66
good, or happiness (all this in the present case
"comes to the same thing) or, (what comes again
"to the same thing) to prevent the happening of
"pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose
"interest is concerned; if that party be the com-
"munity in general, then the happiness of the
"community; if a particular individual, then the
"happiness of that individual."
"The interest of the community is one of the
"most general expressions that can occur in the
"phraseology of Morals.
"meaning of it is often lost.
No wonder that the
When it has a mean-
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
47
"ing it is this: The Community is a fictitious LECT. II.
"body composed of the individual persons who
"are considered as constituting, as it were, its
"members. The interest of the Community then
"is, what?-the sum of the interests of the several
"members who compose it.
find out
interest of
"It is in vain to talk of the interest of the How we
"Community without understanding what is the what is the
"interest of the Individual. A thing is said to a Commu-
"promote or be for the interest of the individual nity.
"when it tends to add to the sum total of his
66
'pleasures; or, what comes to the same thing,
"to diminish the sum total of his pains.'
""
Principle
"An action then may be said to be conform- The
"able to the principle of Utility, or, for shortness' of Utility.
"sake, to Utility (meaning with respect to the
"community at large) when the tendency it has to
"augment the happiness of the community is
66
greater than any it has to diminish it."
I omit two or three sentences which refer
specially to maxims of Government; then we
come to this :
'Right and
'Ought
"Of an action that is conformable to the prin- The words
ciples of Utility one may always say either Wrong,'
"that it is one which ought to be done, or at least and Ought
"that it is not one that ought not to be
"One may say also that it is right it should be may be
((
not,' to
done. what ex-
tent they
tolerated.
done; at least that it is not wrong it should be
"done; that it is a right
action; at least that it
"is not a wrong action.
"the words ought and right and wrong and others
When thus interpreted,
48
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II.
Claims of
the Tito
school to
be the
Utilitari-
ans.
"of that stamp bear a meaning: when otherwise,
"they have none'."
Surely a disciple of Tito has a right to exclaim,
when he reads these sentences, 'I am the true
orthodox 'Benthamite. You who boast of that name and
'yet spend your lives in seeking for the reforma-
'tion of what you deem abuses, even if you can
'plead the precedent of Mr Bentham himself, are
utterly inconsistent men. You defy the ven-
of those deities, Pleasure and Pain, whom
'I, in accordance with your creed, acknowledge as
'my sovereigns; the one to possess the service
of my life, the other to be induced by all possi-
'ble bribes to leave me alone. You, after all,
'are mimicking the young Hercules in the fable:
'I am convinced that he was a fool.'
Some of
that school
affect to
despise Mr
6
6
geance
Many men of this sort however, instead of claim-
ing to be Mr Bentham's followers, call him a hard
Bentham. dogmatist; perhaps hold that their fine sentimen-
talism, or their religious faith, gives them a right
to speak scornfully of one who merely cared for
Utility. His hardness seems to me far better than
their softness—the barest Utilitarianism which is in
earnest, than a Sentiment and a Religion which are
only an excuse for self-indulgence and contempt.
Instance
of this
folly.
I will not point a moral against others, and
avoid the application of it to myself. As I have
pleaded for egotism I will commit a flagrant act of
egotism, very humiliating to me, I hope of some
good to you. I remember what no other single
¹ Bentham's Works, Vol. 1. Principles of Morals and Legislation, c. 1.
THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE'.
49
person in the world will remember, that when LECT. II.
I was an Undergraduate in this University I
wrote a foolish parody on a book of Mr Ben-
tham, who was then living. It was the easiest
thing possible to travesty his style, which was full,
especially in his later days, of obvious peculiarities,
very interesting to a real student of thought and
language, merely tempting an idler such as I was
to ridicule. I do not suppose so silly a compo-
sition did harm to any one but the writer. A
gnat's sting may annoy a giant, so it might have
given a moment's distress to the old man, if he
had met with it; I trust as scarcely any one else
read it that he never did. But slight as may An act
have been the consequences of the act, my con- wrong
science says distinctly, 'I ought not to have done
it.' I shewed, by doing it, that I was wanting in which it
reverence for grey hairs, and for the continuous
effort of a man through a long life, at the risk
of pain, at the cost of pleasure, to effect what he
thought good for his fellows. If I had not been
more a victim of his theory than he was, I should
have paid greater honour to him.
may be
without
reference
to the pain
inflicts.
monies of
science im-
I make this confession because the recollection The testi-
of an incident, in itself so trifling, illustrates one the Con-
of the most serious and awful problems of the perishable.
Conscience. Its records are permanent. Acts
that to others are dead, still live for the doer of
them. Coleridge tells the story of an ignorant
servant girl who, in the delirium of a fever, re-
peated sentences of Greek and Hebrew, which she
4
50
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. II. had heard her master repeat years before whilst
she was sweeping his study. He deduces this
Biographia lesson from the tale. "It may be more possible
2nd Ed. "for heaven and earth to pass away, than that
"a single act, a single thought, should be loosened
Literaria,
Vol. I. P.
119.
66
or lost from that living chain of causes, with
"all the links of which the free-will, our only
"absolute self, is co-extensive and co-present.
"And this, this perchance is that dread book
"of Judgment in the mysterious hieroglyphics of
"which every idle word is recorded."
LECTURE III.
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
6
THE conscience in me says I ought and I ought LECT. III.
not; so far we arrived at last week. There is no Points al-
ready as-
difference about the question whether these words certained.
'ought' and 'ought not' do exist in our language,
whether there are not equivalent words in the
language of every civilised nation. There is no
difference about the question whether they are
deeply fixed in human speech; no one seriously
dreams of extracting them out of it. Nor, I
believe, if we understand one another, will there be
much hesitation in admitting the maxim for which
I have been contending, that none of the things
I see or handle suggest the word; that the mo-
ment I speak of myself, it starts forth full armed.
That is the explanation of an opinion to which
Mackin-
I alluded in my first Lecture. A very eminent What
writer on Ethics, Sir James Mackintosh, says tosh makes
that other sciences are conversant with what is; racteristic
that the science of Ethics is conversant with what
the cha-
of Ethics.
4-2
52
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
to this
opinion.
C
LECT. III. ought to be. The distinction was plausible in
itself even without considering the authority from
Objection which it proceeded. Yet if we accepted it, Ethics
seemed transferred from the real world in which
we dwell to some other imaginary world. In that
case I was sure we should get no serious attention
for them in this busy practical age. Dismissing
therefore that opinion, without examining what
might be the arguments for it, we asked whether
there was no other difference between this study
and those with which we are engaged elsewhere.
We lighted upon this. We could not find that
the question What am I?' is considered by any
teachers, though it is continually suggested by the
business of the world, as well by every enquiry in
the schools. To grapple with this question seemed
to us the function of the Moralist. If so he can-
not be less immediately occupied with that which
is-with existing facts-than any physical student.
His business cannot be carried on in some distant
Atlantis, nor can he be engrossed in the search
for one. Nevertheless an acute thinker like Sir
defended. James Mackintosh, who was also a man of the
world, was not likely to throw out a hint which
had no substantial worth. In pursuing our own
course we have discovered the worth of it. The
ought does not belong to things-it does not sug-
gest some vague possibility for their improve-
ment-it is linked inseparably to me. It may be
that when I use it most emphatically I am least
inclined to imagine some different condition from
How it
may be
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
53
that in which I find myself. Perhaps I ought to LECT. III.
be acting more in conformity with this state than
I do act; perhaps I ought not to be doing so
many things which are inconsistent with this state.
dislike to
ceptions
order
frame for
This was unquestionably the doctrine of a Butler's
writer for whom Sir James Mackintosh entertained any con-
a very high admiration, Bishop Butler. I have of an
already referred to those discourses of his on which we
Human Nature, which occupy so conspicuous a ourselves.
place in the list of subjects for the Moral Science
Tripos. I have spoken of them as especially bear-
ing on this question of the Conscience. If you
would understand them you should be aware of
the intense dislike which Butler felt for all
schemes by which an Order made out of our fancies
is substituted for the one in which we are placed.
His other great work, the Analogy, is full of
vehement even scornful expressions towards those
who fashion worlds for themselves, and are not
content patiently to examine the characteristics
and indications of that wherein they are sent to
live and work. He exhibits precisely the same
temper in these discourses. He seeks to find out
what human nature is, not what it might be or
ought to be. Though a preacher, he is anxious to
exclude all notions of divinity which would inter-
fere with this design. And therefore the office
which he assigns to the Conscience is primarily
that of warning us that we should not do acts
which disturb the harmony of this Nature,-what
Shakspeare calls 'unproportioned acts.'
54
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III.
That is Butler's principle. He demands a
What is Conscience to exercise a control over our thoughts
conformity
to Nature? and acts, to declare which are and which are
not consistent with the Order or Constitution
of our Nature. But then Mr Bentham tells us
that according to this Order or Constitution of
Nature, Pleasure and Pain are our Sovereign
Masters. And though we may not understand
this lofty phraseology, we are wont to say in
plain prose that we find it natural to take what
we like and to reject what we dislike. If
Concession that is what Mr Bentham means, I should be
tham as to afraid to oppose to him some general theory of
what is natural, even if there were ever so much
to urge in favour of it. I would rather at once
give up the dispute with him, so far as it is a ver-
bal one, and admit that if my Conscience tells me
I ought not to take what I like and to reject what
I dislike, my Conscience is bidding me not stoop
to my nature, but resist it.
to Ben-
the word
Nature.
Do I then give up what I take to be Butler's
meaning in these statements respecting human
Nature, because I find myself puzzled and en-
tangled by the terms which he has chosen? No;
for I recur to my old question, 'What am I?'
Traces of There are a few simple answers to that question
which shew me that there is an Order in which I
am placed, a real order, not an imaginary one-not
an order which might be desirable but which
exists. I am certainly a son, I am a brother,
I am a citizen. Perhaps I am a husband, per-
an Order.
Human
relations.
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
55
haps I am a father. And if the enjoyment of LECT. III.
any pleasure or the avoidance of any pains leads
me to acts which are inconsistent with any of
these positions, my Conscience says 'I ought not
to enjoy that pleasure, I ought not to avoid that
pain.' Let the enjoyment or the avoidance be as
natural as it may, it involves a departure from
the order in which I am placed. I care nothing
about ideals or possibilities. It is a violation of
my actual state; a disturbance and interruption
of that.
of diver-
Bentham.
Let us see then to what we have come. Ben- The point
tham tells us that we are under certain obliga- gence from
tions. So far we are agreed. In using the words
I ought, I confess that I am under an obligation.
Next, he says the obligation is not one of mere
force. I am not moved as a stone is moved, by
external violence. So far also we are agreed.
Thirdly, he says that there are certain influences
of pleasure and pain acting upon me, and that
it is natural for me to yield myself to these in-
fluences. Once more, there is no difference. I
confess these influences. I feel the force of them;
I am not angry that they should be called natu-
ral; it does seem to me natural to bow before
them. But here our strife begins. You tell me
that I must yield to these motives; that when I
use the word ought I only mean, if I mean anything,
that I do what they tell me. I say I mean some-
thing when I use the word ought, and that I never
did mean that; I say no one has meant that by
56
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. the word; no one less than Mr Bentham. The word
Ought and signified to him what it signifies to me, what it
ought not
conflict
sure and
Pain.
involve a signifies to every one, precisely the reverse of this ;
with Plea- it is a self assertion, a denial of the claim of exter-
nal powers to rule me. Pleasure and Pain are not
things which I can see or touch or taste; they are
secret influences which come to me through my
sight or touch or taste. I cannot find them by
dissecting or analysing the things through which
I receive them. If I were not, they would not
be. They have no business therefore to set them-
selves above me. Every time any man or woman
or child says 'I ought,' it says 'I am under an
obligation which is not to you.'
Nature
and human
order.
Practical
To what then? If we said to Nature, we
should retract our previous concession. Moreover
we should incur the peril of Mr Bain's denun-
ciation against those who set up abstract, unseen,
unproducible powers.' But if I shew by broad
patent facts that I am in a certain order-an order
which affects me at every moment-an order into
one part of which I entered at my birth, parts of
which I have deliberately adopted,—it is not a
great assumption to say, In this order I ought to
abide; its influences, like those of Pleasure and
Pain, are invisible, but they are just as real.
And if they come into conflict, as we know that
they do continually, my obligation to the one
may be an obligation to resist the other.
Obligation to an Order or a Constitution may
this order. not sound very practical language. Translate it as
view of
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
57
correspond
not create
quickly as you please into obligation to fathers LECT. III.
and mothers, to brothers and sisters, to a wife, to
your Queen and country. Change as soon as you Affections
will the long word Obligation into the shorter to it; "do
homelier word Duty. I shall never object to such it.
alterations; the mother tongue is always sweeter,
ofter more distinct and definite, than the tongue of
philosophers. But happily when we speak of
persons we cannot forget the affections which we
have for them. How precious these are, how
closely they are intertwined with the roots of our
social existence, I hope to shew you when we
come in a future Course of Lectures-that on
Moral Philosophy-to speak of the Family and the
Nation. But there is a danger of treating those
affections as if they created the Order which calls
for them. If we fall into that mistake, the affec-
tion will become merely a part of our pleasures or
pains. As long as we like a person we shall sup-
pose we are bound to him; our dislike will dis-
solve the tie. We shall live in a circle of what Elective
are called in the cant of our day elective affini- and Rela-
ties; the grand old name of Relations will be
treated as obsolete. That you may escape this
danger, I dwell upon this fact that we are in
an Order; that relations abide whether we are
faithful to them or neglect them; and that the
Conscience in each of us affirms 'I am in this
'order, I ought to act consistently with it, let my
'fancies say what they please.' The necessity for
such firm and distinct language becomes more
affinities
tions.
58
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
Relations.
LECT. III. evident to us the older we grow and the more we
notice the habits and doctrines which are preva-
Peril of lent amongst us. The reverence for parents, the
sanctity of the marriage vow, the permanence of
friendships, are all in peril from the confusion
between likings and affections. Those who re-
solutely draw a distinction between them will
have their reward. They will find that the Con-
science protests not against the fervency, but against
the coldness, feebleness, uncertainty of our affec-
tions.
The
greatest
There is another point, closely connected with
number. this subject of Duty or Obligation, which is sug-
gested by the passage that I read to you last week
from Mr Bentham's Treatise on Morals and Legis-
lation. He sets before himself the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest number of people as the
object which individuals and governments are to
seek. I have said already that I believe he did
seek after that object; when I speak hereafter of
the ideals which have had an influence in raising
men's thoughts above narrow and partial interests,
I shall hope to do justice to that ideal. Here, as
I have told you, my business is not with ideals,
but with the questions, What am I? what has this
word ought' to do with me? These questions
can never be answered whilst we are busy about
numbers, whilst we are losing ourselves in a crowd.
Mr Bentham was aware of this fact himself. He
Each and says, you may remember, "It is in vain to talk of
"the interest of the Community without under-
all.
"
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
59
66
of Morals
lation, c.
Vol. I. p.
standing what is the interest of the individual." LECT. III.
A little while afterwards he discusses an objec-
tion. Mr Bain says of Dr Whewell's doctrine Principles
of the Conscience, that it makes a man a judge and Legis-
in his own case. Mr Bentham foresees that his II. Works,
doctrine is open to the same complaint. "It may 12.
"be said every one will be constituting himself
"judge of this utility; every obligation will cease
"when he no longer perceives that it is his own
"interest." He replies,
He replies, with his usual prompt-
ness and decision, "Every one will constitute Every man
"himself judge of his own utility; this is,
"this ought to be, otherwise man would not
66
his own
and judge of
be useful and
of
what is
mischie-
vous.
honesty.
a reasonable being. He who is not a judge
"what is reasonable for himself is less than an
"infant, is a fool. The obligation which binds
men to their engagements is nothing but a feel-
"ing of an interest of a superior class, which
"outweighs an inferior interest. Men are not Grounds of
"always held by the particular utility of a par-
"ticular engagement, but in the case in which
"the engagement becomes burthensome to one of
"the parties, it is still upheld by the general
"utility of engagements, by the confidence which
"each enlightened man wishes to have placed in
"his word, that he may be considered as trust-
66
66
worthy, and enjoy the advantages attached to
probity and esteem.”
and ambi-
How we are tossed back in these sentences, Evasions,
from the Community to the individual, from the guities in
individual to the Community! "It is vain to tham.
in Ben-
60
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. "speak of the interest of the Community without
"understanding the interest of the individual.”
"He who is not a judge of what is reasonable for
"himself is a fool." And yet the reason which a
man bas for being faithful to his engagements is,
that he wishes to have faith placed in his word
(of course by the Community to which he be-
longs), that he wishes to be considered (of course
by that Community) as trustworthy, and enjoy
the advantages attached (of course by that Com-
munity) to probity and esteem.
They do
not imply
any dis-
honest
One is absolutely sure that these motives did
not govern Mr Bentham. He wished to speak
intention. true words, not to have credit for speaking them;
not to be considered trustworthy, but to be trust-
worthy; not to have the votes of men on his side,
but to deserve them, and to maintain his cause
without them, if they were all against him. But
this bewildered language in a writer who especially
desired to be precise-this suggestion of insince-
rity in one who continually denounced insincerity
in his neighbours, and certainly strove to be clear
of it in his own acts-is inevitable, it seems to
me, if the solemn 'I ought' and 'I ought not' of
the Conscience is explained away as the result of
some external influence.
J
I should not do justice to that mode of ac-
counting for its operations, if I confined myself to
Mr Bentham. Since his time Mr Bain has elabo-
rated the same doctrine more completely, and in
language far more august and imposing. There
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
61
are several passages on the subject in his work on LECT. III.
the Emotions and the Will. I quote the one in
which he has summed up his decisions.
(6
tion of the
into the
punish-
"I have given it," he says,
'as my delibe- Resolu-
"rate opinion that authority or punishment is the Conscience
"commencement of that state of mind recognised fear of
"under the various names Conscience, the Moral ment.
"Sense, the Sentiment of Obligation. The major
"part of every Community adopt certain rules
"of conduct necessary for the common preserva-
"tion or ministering to the common well being.
"They find it not merely their interest, but the
"very condition of their existence, to observe a
"number of maxims of individual restraint and
"of respect to one another's feelings on such
points as person, property, and good name.
"Obedience must be spontaneous on the part of The So-
the larger number, or on those whose influence submissive
preponderates in the Society; as regards the fractory
"rest, compulsion must be brought to bear.
Every one, not of himself disposed to follow the
"rules prescribed by the Community, is subjected
"to some infliction of pain to supply the absence
"of other motives; the infliction increasing in
"severity until obedience is obtained. It is the
"familiarity with this régime of compulsion and of
'suffering constantly increasing until resistance is
overborne, that plants in the infant and youthful
"mind the first germs of the sense of obligation.
"I know of no fact that would prove the exist-
"ence of any such sentiment in the primitive cast
66
((
66
ciety-its
and re-
members.
62
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. “of our mental constitution. An artificial system
Treatment "of controlling the actions is contrived, adapted
fractory. "to our volitional nature, the system of using
of the re-
"pain to deter from particular sorts of conduct.
"A strong line of distinction is drawn in every
"human mind between actions that bring no pain,
66
66
except what arise out of themselves, as when
"we encounter a bitter taste or a scalding touch,
"and those actions that are accompanied with
pains imposed by persons about us. These ac-
"tions, and the circumstances attending them,
"make a deep and characteristic impression; we
"have a peculiar notion attaching to them, and
"to the individual persons the authors of the
Ideal “attendant pains. A strong ideal avoidance, not
unmixed perhaps with the perturbation of fear,
"is generated towards what is thus forbidden by
"penalties rising with transgression. The feeling
"drawn out towards those that administer the
Authority "pain is also of the nature of dread; we term it
avoidance.
66
and Dread. "usually the feeling of authority. From first to
66
'last this is the essential and defining quality of
"the Conscience, although mixed up with other
ingredients. As Duty is circumscribed by pun-
"ishment, so the sense of obligation has no other
"universal property, except the ideal and actual
"avoidance of conduct prohibited by penalties.
Education. "This discipline indoctrinates the newly introduced
"member of Society with the sentiment of the
"forbidden, which by and bye takes root and ex-
"pands into the sentiment of moral disapproba-
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
63
flogged
"tion; he then joins with the other members of LECT. III.
"the Community in imposing and enforcing the How the
"prohibitions that have been stamped and branded become
"in the course of his own education. Duty then
66
66
floggers.
may be said to have two prime supports in the
"more self-regarding parts of our Nature-the
"sense of the common preservation and well being
operating upon a preponderating majority, and
"the sense of punishment brought to bear upon
"individuals (who must be the smaller number)
"not sufficiently prompted by the other sentiment.
"Order being once established in a Society, that
"is to say, the practice of obedience being habi-
"tual to the mass of the Community, it is only
"necessary to apply a disciplining process to the
young to prepare them for the same acquiescence
"in the public morality. The imposition of penal- The senti-
"ties begets at once the sense and avoidance of forbidden.
"the forbidden and the awe of authority, and
""
66
'this, as a general rule, is retained through life
"as the basis of the individual Conscience, the
"foremost motive to abstain from actions desig-
"nated as wrong.
""
ment of the
dinate
"It is not implied" (he goes on) "that con-
"science is never anything else than the actual and
"ideal avoidance and dread of punishment. Other The subor
"elements concur sometimes so largely as to motives.
"obliterate in the view the primary germ and
"characteristic type of the faculty. There are mo-
"tives that supersede the operation of punishment
"in a variety of instances; as when we contract a
64
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. “positive sentiment of good will towards those
Entering
the com-
66
66
66
whom the law forbids us to injure. Even then
we do not lose the strong feeling implanted in
"us respecting the forbidden and the authorita-
"tive; we simply are no longer in the position
"of being moved by that alone. Our tender feel-
"ings, our sentiments of the fair, the equal, and
"the consistent, if liberally developed and well
"directed, impel us, as it were of our own accord,
"to respect those interests of our fellow-beings
"that are protected by the enactments of Society.
Moreover, as already said, there is a certain
pany of the "maturity of the well disposed mind at which we
Majority.
"enter the company of the majority, spontaneous
"in its own obedience from a recognition of the
common safety, and compelling the dissentient
"minorities by force or punishment. At this
stage the Conscience, which was at first derived
"or implanted, is now independent or self-sustain-
The per "ing. The judgment of the individual approves
"of the common prohibitions against falsehood,
"injustice, breach of bargains, and other injuries,
"as prohibitions essential to its own security, in
company with the rest of the Society, and Con-
science therefore passes into a higher grade of
the prudential motive." Emotions and Will,
2nd Edition, pp. 481—483.
fected
man.
66
66
66
66
66
Here the Community stands forth in its full
Compari- grandeur. Mr Bentham is in general much more
direct and straightforward than his successor.
son of the
two
writers.
Throwing off philosophical conventionalities, he
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
65
tion of the
nity ac-
Mr Bain's
can talk in plain English of a man being a fool. LECT. III.
But he falls into vagueness and contradiction The func-
because he cannot give up the claims of the in- commu-
dividual to be heard; he puts those claims higher cording to
than any one who recognises a Conscience would theory.
dare to put them. Mr Bain is free from any
such perplexity. The work of the community is
deliberately to coerce the individual by punish-
ment (which Mr Bain identifies with authority),
till in the maturity of a well-disposed mind he
enters into the company of the majority. Mr Bain
has therefore not the slightest objection to a
Conscience. So far from disliking it, he values
the Conscience as that in each man which leads
him to tremble at the decrees of a majority. It
has nothing to do indeed with 'the primitive cast
of our mental constitution.' But by cultivating 'a The Con-
strong ideal avoidance' 'of the pains imposed by creature.
the persons about us, not unaccompanied perhaps
with the perturbation of fear,' the 'newly intro-
duced member of society is indoctrinated with the
sentiment of the forbidden.' And thus having
his own Conscience properly corrected and shaped
under this discipline, the joins with the other
members of the community in imposing and en-
forcing the prohibitions that have been stamped
and branded in his own education.' My excuse
for repeating expressions which I have just read
to you is that I fear you should lose them in the
multitude of eloquent phrases by which they are
encompassed, and that as they are exactly opposed
science its
A
5
66
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. to what I have been saying respecting the Con-
science, you ought to have the opportunity of
carefully weighing them.
pose of
to enslave
cipate?
You will judge from what I have said already
that I am not at all anxious to debate the question
whether the Conscience belongs to the primitive
cast of our mental Constitution. Some-probably
Mr Bain-would seek for that primitive cast among
savages. I have contended that the words 'I' and
'ought' do not belong to the vocabulary of sa-
vages as they belong to the vocabulary of civilised
Is the pur- men. Again, no one I suppose would dispute the
Education assertion that the parent or teacher of a child
or to eman-exercises an authority over it which is exter-
nal to it. Nor should I, or any one I know, say
that punishment is not one of the instruments of
this authority, or that it may not be used for the
purpose of awakening or cultivating the Con-
science. That the community of which a parent
or a teacher is a member is deeply concerned in
the question, how he exercises this authority, how
and to what end he wields this punishment, is a
belief which I think we should all entertain, even
if it had not received Mr Bain's imprimatur. But
in that 'how' and 'to what end' lies a tremendous
controversy. The distinction of the civilised man
from the savage is, as it seems to me, that he is
not to the same extent the victim of external in-
fluences, that he rises above them and tries to
rule them. The external authority of the parent
or teacher I maintain is useless unless he appeals
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
67
nal and
authority.
to that which is within the child, is mischievous LECT. III.
unless it is exerted to call that forth. The ex- The exter-
ternal authority must become an internal autho- internal
rity, not co-operating with the forces which are
seeking to crush the I in the child but, working
against those forces, working to deliver the child
from their dominion. The punishments therefore
which are the weapons of this authority but never
can be confounded with it, must be directed ex-
pressly to this purpose. If the child stoops, as it
will stoop continually, to the attraction of outward
things which it has been forbidden to touch or
taste because they will do it harm, punishments
will remind it that to obey its teachers is better
than to obey its inclinations. The teacher will
endeavour so to contrive his punishment that 'the
sentiment of the forbidden' may always be accom-
panied with the sentiment of trust in the person
who has forbidden. If the child is taught to have
a dread of him as one who is an inflicter of pain,
not to have a reverence for him as one who cares
for it and is seeking to save it from its own folly—
if the child is instructed carefully to separate the
pain which rises out of its own acts from the pain
which he inflicts so that it may associate the pain
with him rather than with them-then all has been
done which human art can do to make it grow up
a contemptible coward, crouching to every majority
which threatens it with the punishments that it
has learnt to regard as the greatest and only evils;
one who may at last, 'in the maturity of a well-
5-2
68
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. disposed mind,' become the spontaneous agent of
The notion
Con-
science.
cable to
soldiers
and sail-
ors?
a majority in trampling out in others the freedom
which has been so assiduously trampled out in him.
A parent or a teacher who pursues this object is
of all the ministers of a community the one whom
it should regard with the greatest abhorrence, see-
ing that he is bringing up for it, not citizens, but
slaves.
I do not deny that Mr Bain can appeal on
of a public behalf of his view of Society and Education to a
number of precedents in past days—to a vast body
of opinion in our own. If it were not so I should
not care to speak of his theories; for theories go
for very little, except so far as they condense and
formalise the tempers and habits which shape the
talk of drawing-rooms, the debates in parliament,
the lessons in primers and story-books, the trans-
Is it appli- actions in counting-houses and shops. There has
been a disposition in many-from very different
even opposite motives-to say that our soldiers
and sailors must be drilled according to the maxims
of Mr Bain's education that they may have a
merely public Conscience. "What would become
of us," it has been asked, "if each of them felt
himself to be an I; said for himself, 'I ought and
I ought not?" My answer is this, I know not
what would have become of us in any great crisis
if this personal feeling had not been awakened; if
every man had not felt that he was expected to
do his duty; if duty had been understood by each
sailor or soldier in Mr Bain's sense as the dread of
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
69
of facts.
punishment; if the captain who asked for obe- LECT. III.
dience had been just the person towards whom
that slavish dread was most directed. Unless the The test
obedience of our sailors and soldiers had been
diametrically the reverse of that sentiment which
Mr Bain describes, I believe there is not a regi-
ment which would not have turned its back in the
day of battle, not a ship which would not have
struck its flag. The charm of the captain's eye
and voice, of his example and his sympathy, this,
as all witnesses whose testimony is worth any-
thing have declared, has had an electrical influence
upon hosts which could enable them to face punish-
ments from enemies considerably more terrible
than any which the most savage vengeance could
devise for desertion. It is not the thought of what
a majority will say or do that can stir any indivi-
dual man to stand where he is put and die. It
is that he has been aroused to the conviction, I
am here, and here I ought to be.'
That is not sentiment but plain sense; an ad-
herence to facts known and confessed, a refusal to
exchange facts for grand and empty generalisa-
tion. There are indeed cases, extreme cases, Mr
Bain admits, when Conscience passes into a high
grade of the prudential motive.' Let us look at Case of the
one of these extreme cases.
A set of soldiers, head.
(
rough men of the ordinary English type, are off
the Cape on board the ship Birkenhead. I shall
spoil the story. The Professor of poetry in the
sister University shall tell it for me.
Birken-
70
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III.
Poems of
Sir F.
Doyle.
The
' higher
grade of
the pru-
dential
motive'
illustrated.
Right on our flank the crimson sun went down,
The deep sea rolled around in dark repose,
When, like the wild shriek from some captured town,
A cry of women rose.
The stout ship Birkenhead lay hard and fast,
Caught, without hope, upon a hidden rock;
Her timbers thrilled as nerves, when thro' them passed
The spirit of that shock.
And ever like base cowards, who leave their ranks
In danger's hour, before the rush of steel,
Drifted away, disorderly, the planks,
From underneath her keel.
Confusion spread, for, though the coast seemed near,
Sharks hovered thick along that white sea-brink.
The boats could hold ?-not all-and it was clear
She was about to sink.
"Out with those boats, and let us haste away,"
Cried one,
"ere yet yon sea the bark devours."
The man thus clamouring was, I scarce need say,
No officer of ours.
We knew our duty better than to care
For such loose babblers, and made no reply,
Till our good colonel gave the word, and there
Formed us in line to die.
There rose no murmur from the ranks, no thought,
By shameful strength, unhonoured life to seek;
Our post to quit we were not trained, nor taught
To trample down the weak.
So we made women with their children go,
The oars ply back agen, and yet agen;
Whilst, inch by inch, the drowning ship sank low,
Still under steadfast men.
What follows why recall? The brave who died,
Died without flinching in the bloody surf;
They sleep as well, beneath that purple tide,
As others, under turf.
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
71
I need not tell you that these soldiers as LECT. III.
little dreamed of doing a great or meritorious act
as of escaping punishment. They simply did
what they ought to do. Their business was to go
to the bottom, and they went.
tion of Mr
trine in the
Inquisi-
I have spoken of our own times, for they con- Anticipa-
cern us most. But I said, Mr Bain had also Bain's doc-
precedents of other days in his favour. Inquisitors practice of
and persecutors of all ages have attempted in dif- tors.
ferent ways to act upon his maxim. They have
thoroughly understood that identification of autho-
rity with punishment, which he perhaps has been
the first openly and in terms to proclaim. By
punishment to bring a reluctant minority into con-
formity with the will of a majority has been their
expressed and deliberate purpose. To cultivate a
Conscience in the young which should begin with
a dread of transgressing the decrees of the major-
ity, which should at last acquiesce in them natu-
rally and enforce them upon other men, has been
the aim of their policy. And having had great
and wonderful success in putting down recusants
by force, and in reducing nations to servility, they
have looked forward with a certain dim anticipa-
tion to a period when the higher grade of the
prudential motive shall be attained, when no man
who has thoughts unlike those of the majority
shall utter them, when very few indeed will have
any thoughts to utter.
These inquisitors and persecutors of old times,
Mr Bain will say, appealed to 'an abstract, un-
72
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. seen, unproducible power;' he acknowledges no
such power. He would do himself great injus-
Society the tice in saying so. No power that I ever heard
frightful of of is so 'abstract, unseen, unproducible' as the
bugbears. Society which is put forth to terrify and crush
most
each man who dares to claim a distinct existence.
Where is it, what is it, who brought it forth?
Parents, Schoolmasters, Legislators, are its agents.
It remains full of ghostly dread, gathering into
itself all that is most tremendous in the phan-
toms which we boast that modern enlightenment
has driven from our nurseries. When Mr Ben-
tham speaks of a Community, he says that 'it is
a fictitious body composed of the individuals who
are considered as constituting as it were its mem-
bers.' A man who abhorred fictions and figures
of speech falls into these strange expressions, be-
cause he cannot quite divest himself of the old
belief that a community is a body, real and not
fictitious, consisting of individuals who are its
actual members. There is in his phraseology the
after glow of a sun which has set. No such part-
ing radiance disturbs the heaven of Mr Bain, He
is haunted by no old recollections of a body and
its members. Whether the Community be ficti-
tious or real signifies little to him. It serves
equally, in either character, to extinguish the
individual.
And therefore it may be quite necessary, in
order to avoid the terror of these 'abstract, un-
producible powers,' that we should face the ques-
THE CONSCIENCE AND ITS MASTERS.
73
monology
Philoso-
tion whether the Conscience bears witness of any LECT. III.
actual living superhuman power to which it owes
homage. Do not start at the word 'superhuman,' The Dæ-
as if I were bringing it forth out of some cavern of modern
of divinity. Butler, we have seen, did his utmost phers.
to confine the Conscience within the limits of hu-
man nature. The experiment was an interesting
one, most ably conducted. But it involved him in
evident perplexities. It laid him open to the charge
pressed by Mr Bain against Dr Whewell, who
tried to present Butler's statements in a modified
form, that he either invented an ideal Conscience,
or made every man a judge in his own case. Mr
Bentham escapes that danger by erecting Pleasure
and Pain into two superhuman powers, to which
man must needs be in subjection; they themselves,
it would appear, paying a feudal homage to an-
other Power called Nature-obviously not Human
Nature in Butler's sense, but a very awful, mys-
terious, 'unproducible' deity. Equally superhu-
man is that Society which creates a Conscience by
the infliction of punishments, the remembrance
and expectation of which keeps its subject in habi-
tual prostration. Such opinions, which are speci-
ally the opinions of our day, leave one who is dis-
cussing the question of the Conscience no choice.
He is hemmed in by superhuman influences of
some kind. If those which great philosophers bid
us tremble at appear to him of a very oppressive
kind, ministering to weakness, to superstition, to
slavery, he must ask if there is no other which
74
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. III. may be stronger than these, which may be a
deliverer from them?
Some
superhu-
the con-
fessed
master of
the Con-
science;
what
Power?
Though in this course of Lectures I may do
man power little more than raise that question, I must ob-
serve here that it could never less be evaded than
in this England of the 19th century. The super-
human is not banished, as we have seen, from
the speculations of its most approved sages; it is
certainly not banished from the entertainments of
its most refined and most sceptical triflers. That
which is not allowed a place in our inmost con-
viction will float about us in phantastic shapes,
which we dare not ask whether they bring with
them airs from Heaven or blasts from Hell.
Conscience will make cowards of us all, if it does
not lead us to the source of courage.
The
LECTURE IV.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
Casuistry
I HAVE found myself already in conflict with two LECT. IV.
eminent philosophers of this century on the subject How
of the Conscience. I should not have plunged begins.
into such disputes if they had only concerned cer-
tain Moral Systems. But the assertion of Mr
Bentham that Pleasure and Pain are the Sove-
reigns of mankind, the doctrine of Mr Bain that
the Conscience is to be trained by punishment till
it bows before the decrees of a majority, involve
questions which affect every act of our lives. A What
number of those cases of Conscience with which cases the
the Casuist professes to deal, and which, whether
he deals with them or no, perplex our conduct and with.
distract our thoughts, take their rise in the de-
mands: Ought I or ought I not to obey the com-
mands of this Pleasure or this Pain, or of this Na-
ture which appears to be their Mistress? Ought
I or ought I not to obey the commands of this
kind of
Casuist
must deal
76
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV. Society, this Majority, which is able to enforce its
1. Those
which
words
Pleasure,
Pain,
Nature.
decrees by terrible penalties, and which has va-
rious bribes for bringing me into sympathy with
it? I cannot, as I said last week, avoid entering
on a third enquiry, Ought I or ought I not to
perform certain services, to offer certain sacrifices,
at the bidding of some invisible divinity? I might
comprehend this enquiry in the other two, for
Pleasure and Pain, Nature and Society, as Mr
Bentham and Mr Bain set them forth to us, are
invisible powers, whatever visible forms they may
assume. Still we shall find that for practical
purposes it is convenient to speak of Cases of
Conscience under each of these three heads.
I. I begin with those which concern Pleasure
turn on the and Pain. Mr Bentham appears to have thought
that there are but two ways in which this subject
can be contemplated. He himself, the champion of
the principle of Utility, maintains that it behoves
us to seek the greatest amount of pleasure which it
is possible for us, being such creatures as we are,
to enjoy, for the least amount of pain which, being
such creatures as we are, it is possible for us to
suffer. Another set of men are champions of what
he calls the principle of Asceticism. These, he
says, 'approve of actions, so far as they tend to
'diminish the happiness of the persons whose inter-
est is in question, disapprove of actions so far as
'they tend to augment it.' Whether there are any
persons who would acknowledge this to be a fair
statement of their objects, I greatly doubt; most
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
77
and Asce-
will say that the description is an ugly caricature, LECT. IV.
not a faithful portrait. But since there are two or Utility
three kinds of asceticism, which may present them- ticism.
selves to us in our own experience, and may give
rise to cases of Conscience, I shall avail myself of
Mr Bentham's word for the sake of enquiring
what it means, and how it may concern us.
of Asce-
says, Pleasures
abandon-
have ed, pain
accepted
work.
(1) Mr Bentham's specimens of the Ascetic are 1st Form
either the Stoic of the old world or the Monk of ticism.
Christendom: men of both these classes, he
have disapproved of pleasure as such, and
approved of pain as such. Now there is a sense, for the
as I have observed already, in which Mr Bentham sake of
himself was an Ascetic as much as any Stoic or
any Monk. Pleasures offered themselves to him,
and he deliberately chose pains in preference to
them. He may have posted his books carefully
-may have calculated accurately that he should
have so much more pleasure on the whole, if he
endured some immediate trouble and annoyance,
he may even have thought that he secured some
pleasure at the moment which, either from the
quality of it, or from the intensity of it, outweighed
the pain of that moment. All this is possible; Asceticism
but whatever the previous processes that went on Bentham.
in him were, when the pleasure actually stood out
before him inviting him to partake of it, he must
have assumed the position of an Ascetic. Do not
forget this. The reasons of his conduct may have
been of one kind or another; his actual conduct
was that of a man who would be stigmatised by
of Mr
78
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV. the habitual followers of pleasure as an Ascetic.
Asceticism
of Napo-
leon.
For an Ascetic, to all intents and purposes, every
man must be who has a work to do, and who
determines that it shall be done, let the induce-
ments to abandon it or neglect it be what they
may.
Take another instance from a man who will
not generally be suspected of an over amount of
conscientiousness. Napoleon the first, when about
15 years of age, was in the military school at
Paris. He complained to the superintendents of
the school about its arrangements. What do
What do you
suppose were his objections to them? He said the
fare of himself and his brother scholars was too
luxurious. It could not prepare them for living
in poor households, still less for the hardships of
the camp. He urged that instead of having
two courses a day they should have ammunition.
bread and soldiers' rations, and that they should
be compelled to mend and clean their own stock-
The fruits ings and shoes. Here you have a young Ascetic;
so assuredly he would have been considered at the
school; so he was. He chose what was painful in
preference to what was pleasant. And because he
did so, he was able hereafter to trample upon those
peoples and monarchs who accounted pleasure the
end of life, whose greatest desire was to avoid
pain. No Alpine snows, no armed men could
withstand him. Only when he encountered men
who had learnt, as he had learnt, to claim domi-
nion over circumstances, to endure suffering for
of it in
his case.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
79
the sake of a higher end, could that strength, LECT. IV.
which he had won through his Asceticism be
broken.
of Asceti-
becoming
into a good.
(2) Napoleon was no theorist; he hated the- 2nd Form
ories. He wanted to be independent of his own cism.
inclinations that he might exercise power over
other men.
The stoical theory was deduced from
an observation how much power a man possesses
who is not the victim of pleasures or of pains.
The endurance of pain, the contempt of it, seemed Pain
to the Stoic the signs of a man. He exaggerated elevated
the notion, till pain itself acquired a glory in his
eyes, till he thought himself grand for hating plea-
sure. Such pride involved contradiction. Plea-
sure was not his master, what was? To be simply
his own master, to be alone in the world, was a
poor result of his victory. Men might say with The Stoic.
great reason, 'It is better to eat, drink, and be
merry, than merely to dwell in this magnificent
self-sufficiency.' The asceticism of the Monk had The Monk.
a different ground. It was associated with the
belief that the best man is he who can bear pain
for his fellows. But it often passed, like the
Stoical doctrine, into a notion that pain had some
virtue or excellence of its own. Out of this arose
a greater contradiction than in the former case.
He who was to be a sacrifice for others began
to think how much glory his pain could bring
to him.
(3) This is the second form of Asceticism;
that form under which it presented itself to
x
80
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
of Asceti-
cism.
LECT. IV. Mr Bentham as the direct antagonist of his
3rd Form principle of Utility. There is a third form which
is, as it seems to me, not opposed to that principle,
but a developement of it. A man believes that
by enduring pain he may save himself from pain
in a future state, may even perhaps obtain plea-
The calcu- sure in a future state. He calculates, as Mr
the Utili- Bentham would teach him to calculate, how he
sociated may secure the least amount of pain, the greatest
mortality. amount of pleasure, possible. His calculation may
take in elements which Mr Bentham would ex-
clude; their fundamental axiom is the same.
lations of
tarian as-
with im-
Cases
under the
(a) In each of us there will arise cases of con-
first head. Science into which one or another or all three of
these ascetical notions may enter. Every one has
some work to do. Every one has inducements to
forsake that work for things which, whether plea-
sant to others or not, are pleasant to him, which
no sophistry can persuade him are not pleasant.
Mr Bentham's assumption that what is pleasant
is natural, that Nature has appointed it for us,
commends itself to his judgment. Only there is
something in him which says I ought not. The
agreeable thing will hinder me from doing the
thing which I am occupied with. The agreeable
thing accepted to-day will make me weaker to-
morrow, less capable of determining my course,
more the victim of the impulses and impressions
that come to me from without.
Some men get rid of this troublesome re-
monstrance easily; 'I like it' drives this 'I ought
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
81
between 'I
'I ought
not' speedily. Some at once, as Napoleon, take LECT. IV.
the ascetical course. They have a distinct object Struggle
before them, nothing shall tempt them to forget it. like' and
A great number, perhaps the greatest number of not.'
men, touch neither of these extremes. They hover
between Nature and Conscience. They cannot
silence the ‘ought not.' But they ask themselves
why they should pay heed to it, why they should
not take this or that pleasure which it seems to
prohibit, undergo this or that painful effort which
it seems to enjoin? What is this restraining, tor-
'menting voice? From what cavern does it issue?
'Do I clearly catch its messages? Are they in-
'deed saying, Avoid this and this? Do this and
'this?' Hence begin cases of Conscience. The
man consults himself or consults some friend or
some professional Casuist about these points. 'May The former
'I indulge my own taste or fancy? If not, why argumen-
'not? If it is not bad for that man, why is it
'for me?' What answers the Casuist may make
to these enquiries I am not now considering. I
am only tracing the cases which come before him
to their sources, and showing you that they are
not imaginary, but such as enter into the trans-
actions of every day, and are mingled with the
threads of each man's existence. One remark
I would make in reference to them here. You
may have thought me pedantical or fanciful for
insisting that the Conscience should be contem-
plated in each particular man, that it should never
be treated as something general or belonging to
highly
tative.
6
82
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
Mischief
from
the singu-
lar pro-
noun into
LECT. IV. a number of men. But when these cases pre-
sent themselves to us, the danger of departing
changing from that maxim becomes apparent, even if ad-
herence to it is troublesome. The habit of mea-
the plural, suring ourselves by others is one into which we
slide most easily, and which involves continual
unfairness to them, still greater to ourselves. I
ask why I may not indulge in extravagances in
which a man of twice or thrice my means in-
dulges freely; why I may not eat or drink what
a man with twice or thrice my strength or my
labour perhaps needs. I cling therefore to the
'I ought' and the 'I ought not;' that will not
interfere with the discovery and acknowledgement
of laws by which we are all bound; it will pre-
vent me from assuming the practice of this man
or that as the standard of mine, or my practice
as the standard of his.
Generation
of the
ceticism.
(b) The first form of Asceticism, that which
Stoical As- Mr Bentham and Napoleon practised, may then
be very needful for you and me; we may not
be safe if we discard it. Shall I tell you how we
become involved in the second? in that kind of
Asceticism I mean which treats pain as a positive
good, pleasure as a positive evil? We do not
drop into Stoicism naturally. A few may have
some bias to it from education; in general
when it is enforced in childhood there is a
reaction against it in later years. A few may
be drawn into it by arguments or the example
of others; more attractive arguments and other
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
83
convert
curism.
examples will probably in a little time break LECT. IV.
the force of those; the Stoic may soon be turned
into an Epicurean. The doctrine is much more
commonly embraced by one who has for a long
time acted on the maxim that pleasure is the
supreme power which he must obey. He has Savage
temper of
had some stern and clear intimations of the effects the recent
which come from subjection to this ruler.
A from Epi-
violent quarrel with himself is the consequence;
with himself or with the tendencies to which he
has passively yielded. He gnashes his teeth at
the things which have been the occasion of his
distress and humiliation; he calls them by hard
names; he denounces pleasure as pleasure; he
greedily seizes upon pain as if by enduring it
he could take some revenge upon himself for
that avoidance of it in times past which now
seems to him feeble and cowardly. Cases of
Conscience involving this kind of Asceticism are
very numerous. The symptoms which they dis-
close are hard for the patient himself to deal
with; they may be much aggravated by the pre-
scriptions of quacks. Mere abusive epithets, such Not dimi-
as Mr Bentham indulges in, or the solemn an- contempt.
nouncement that we ought to seek the greatest
amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain
possible, will not touch even the surface of such
cases.
nished by
class of
(c) Still more embarrassing are those cases The third
into which the third notion of Asceticism enters. Cases.
Suppose a man rich and comfortable, who has
6-2
84
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV. never for a moment dreamed that there could
be any maxim of life but that which Mr Ben-
tham enunciates, who has habitually sought as
much pleasure as he could get and avoided
pain of every kind,-Or suppose an Irish la-
bourer with dilapidated trousers and straw peep-
ing through his hat, who yet to the extent of
his means has wooed pleasure at wakes and fairs,
sometimes inflicting a little pain with a shil-
lelagh as a way of diversifying the pleasure.
The spectre Either of these awakens on a certain day to
life rising the feeling that there is something which he
of a past
before a
man.
he lay it?
ought to have done, or ought not to have done.
The past which he seemed to have left far
behind him comes strangely back to him. His
yesterdays claim to be part of him as much as
the present moment: they may continue to put
forth that claim for ages. He may never be
able to shake them off. That would be dreadful.
How can How can he banish the apparition? What can
he do that it may not give him much more
pain, and greater pain, than it is giving him
now? Some one is tormenting him; seems to
like tormenting him. Could he not make some
terms with the enemy? Could he not agree to
suffer something now that he may have less
weight of suffering hereafter? Could he not find,
or could not some one find for him, a scheme
of arrangements, compromises, compensations, by
which he might be excused from some of the
punishment which he dreads, and might also
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
85
stition
on such ex-
encounter-
Utilita-
rian.
retain a certain tolerable share of the present LECT. IV.
pleasure which he is loath to part with? How
many cases have occurred, and are occurring
every day, of this kind, no words can tell; or
what schemes of Casuistry have been devised to
meet them. The precepts of Mr Bentham dif- The super-
fused ever so widely, embraced ever so cordially, consequent
can have no effect in settling them. For as I periments
said before, his precepts have to all intents and cannot be
purposes been adopted already by these troubled ed by the
spirits. They are turning to the religious Ca-
suist for help, because their Utilitarian adviser
has failed to take account of a disturbing force
in them which makes his medicines ineffectual.
'You can of course call me an Ascetic if I resort
'to plans plausible and skilfully devised for sup-
'plying the defect in your system; for avoid-
'ing a pain which I actually feel, and which,
'upon your own shewing, I ought to account the
'great and only evil, for obtaining as much plea-
'sure as I can under the conditions in which
'I find myself. Some may call my calculations
'ignominious; you cannot. I learnt the need of
'them in your school.'
Tyranny.
II. I pass to that class of Cases which has Social
reference to Society. Whether the Education
which Mr Bain speaks of the education which
shapes each man's wishes, purposes, convictions,
according to the wishes, purposes, convictions of
a majority—is desirable or not, there can be no
question that such an education exists, that it is
86
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
of Mr
tions on
this sub-
ject.
LECT. IV. working very extensively and with great power.
Popularity The philosopher has here also generalised from
Bain's no- the practice which he sees around him; his doc-
trine is certain to meet with favour for precisely
the same reason which secures favour to Mr
Bentham's doctrine respecting Pleasure and Pain;
it represents accurately what a number of men
in various quarters are actually doing or striving
to do.
To appreciate their work or their endeavour
we must recollect that the grand word Society
or Community really represents a number of dif
ferent Societies or Communities, each of which
is acting upon a certain number of individuals.
Example For instance, in every trade there is a commu-
Maxims. nity aiming to train the notions of those who
from Trade
belong to it in accordance with the notions which
it has inherited or which it has adopted. The
Conscience of the individual who engages in the
trade is formed, Mr Bain would say, by the ma-
jority of those who have entered into it already;
punishments, such as exclusion from the inter-
course or sympathy of their fellows, make them
feel the great inconvenience of adopting any
maxims or practices unlike those of the majority.
How they The younger members by degrees rise to their
'branded' share of government and enforce the same rules
their pupils and successors. A great number
upon
attain that 'high grade of the prudential motive,'
at which conformity becomes no longer a diffi-
cult effort, the result of terror at a rod continu-
become
into the
young.
·
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
87
ally suspended over them, but means the ready LECT. IV.
submission to a rule which they feel to be con-
venient, and which they have the pleasure of
making others feel to be inevitable. All that is,
sional pre-
inde- ference for
He opinion.
individual
no doubt, true. Mr Bain himself allows for occa- The occa-
sional exceptions; a few men like to be
pendent, to choose a way of their own.
does not deny that there is a certain amount of
benefit to be derived from these anomalous indi-
viduals. He does not encourage their growth;
all the processes of his discipline tend to dis-
courage it. But if they start up in spite of the
discipline they may perhaps be turned to some
account. However dangerous, an optimist will
hope that their existence may at last turn to
the benefit, not the mischief, of the Community.
tinual pro-
Conscience
man.
Now when I speak of Cases of Conscience in The con-
respect to Society, I mean this; that every man test of the
whatsoever who has been brought under this kind in each
of discipline not only feels tempted to rebel against
it, for the reason which Mr Bain supposes,—be-
cause it thwarts his inclination, because it restrains
some of his enjoyments,-but for another very
different reason, because it prescribes acts to him
which, though they are agreeable to him, though
the punishment for not doing them is very severe,
yet which something tells him that he ought not
to do. I say that there are moments when such
qualms come over every one; and further that
those individual men in whom they become most
strong are not those who find their luxury in ar-
88
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
for Law
LECT. IV. rogant independence, but are those who have the
A protest liveliest sense of their obligations to their fellow-
men, the greatest desire that the laws of the
Nation to which they belong may be not violated,
but maintained.
not for
Indepen-
dence.
Consider that instance of trades to which I
referred just now.
A man finds a custom esta-
blished in the trade to which he has been bred,
the trade by which he is to get his living, which
directly interferes with the observance of a con-
tract recognised by the law of the land between
the tradesman and his customers, at all events
interfering with what he knows to be the under-
standing of the customer when the article is
bought. There is the smallest possible fear of
his ever coming within the reach of the law;
of Law but there are a hundred ways of evading that, a
social Tra- hundred reasons why any person who discovers
The fear
of punish-
ment not
on the side
of the
dition.
The
himself to be injured, if he does discover it, may
not wish to trouble himself with a lawsuit.
reputation he might get with the customer, if
he knew-which is unlikely that a maxim of
the trade had been broken through in his favour,
would not be the weight of a feather against
the loss of credit and caste with those who sur-
round him. Those for whom he has most respect
-men much better than he counts himself—have
gone on in these practices for years; they will
be grieved if he adopts any other. It will seem
to them, it seems to himself, a pharisaical exalta-
tion of his own opinion against theirs. And yet
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
89
Tradition;
conquer?
the voice in him says, I ought not to do it. Here LECT. IV.
is a case of Conscience. A whole world of Ca- Order and
suistry rises out of that struggle between the which is to
opinion of the majority and the 'I ought not'
of the single man. But the 'I ought not' is
not working against an Order, but with an Order.
It is protesting against a disorder, which however
long it has been sanctioned, however many votes
concur in the support of it, is a disorder still,
and will prove itself to be so more and more,
the longer it exists.
for com-
virtue in
I dwell upon this instance of Contracts which
have reference to Property, because we are told
again and again that these depend for their security
simply upon the punishments which enforce the
observance of them, or upon the opinion of their
usefulness which those punishments create, or
upon a general experience of the disadvantages
arising from the violation of them. No country Securities
furnishes so good a test of this principle as the mercial
England of the present day. We are a commercial English
people. Punishments have been especially de-
vised to support the fidelity of pecuniary engage-
ments. They have been suggested by mercantile
men. They have passed under the revision of
lawyers. They have been accepted by parlia-
ments. They have been enforced by the strongest
public opinion. Seldom is there much compassion
felt for a fraudulent debtor; still less for one who
has been a trustee of others' money and has con-
verted it to his own purposes. The newspaper
Society.
90
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV.
effectual?
The be-
liever in
press strengthens and supports the severest judg
ment of onlookers and sufferers. It would seem
as if commercial crimes in this country were pro-
hibited by every motive which could act upon
Are they reasonable beings. And yet which of us has
not heard complaints that they are on the in-
crease? And which of us has not heard those
who dwell most on the force of punishments and
of public opinion-who laugh the bitterest laugh
when a moralist speaks of any other, yet appeal-
ing in despair to the conscience of individuals,
trying whether they cannot arouse that to sustain
the weakness of the power which, according to
their theory, should be invincible? To be sure
the might when they explain themselves they affirm that
it is Opinion which gives effect to Conscience,
the Con- that all they want is to create an Opinion against
certain acts that are mischievous to Society.
Wearisome and endless see-saw! From Opinion
to Conscience; from Conscience to Opinion. If
you can have an opinion that you have a Consci-
ence so much the better! But unless you have a
Conscience, the opinion will do no good! Oh
learn to bear the scorn of the philosophers who
talk to you in this fashion! The scorn is not for
you, but for themselves. There is a Conscience in
each of them, whether he owns it or not. Give
him credit for it; appeal to it; let him keep his
theory along with it, if he likes, and if he can.
of opinion
begging
help from
science.
The cases which arise in the Conscience of a
Tradesman or Merchant, and which often set him
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
91
which The prin-
ciple illus-
at variance with the customs and maxims of his LECT. IV.
class, are not more numerous than those
occur in the Conscience of the Lawyer, the
sician, the Clergyman: they are of the same kind. applicable
A man asks himself if he ought to do this, if he fessions.
ought not to do that.
a way of his own?
Why? That he
Phy- trated in
Why? That he may have
No! precisely because he
Trades
to all Pro-
fears that he has been following a way of his
own which was not consistent with his position
as Lawyer, Physician, Clergyman, with that which
was due from him to his clients, his patients, his
flock. A Conscience of Duty wholly apart from
any punishments which may be inflicted on him
for the neglect of it is awakened in him; he asks
whether this duty has been done. Suppose some
opinion or censure or even punishment has brought
out that Conscience; still it is there. The opi-
nion, the censure, the punishment has only called
it forth-availed nothing till it was called forth.
So here again is a multitude of cases, various as Cases of
the circumstances and as the characters of indi- most nu-
viduals are various, but all of the same kind; all and vari-
beginning with the discovery in each man that England.
he has responsibilities, which no class, no majority
of men, has imposed upon him, and from which
no class, no majority of men, can release him.
The treatment of such cases-the methods
which may not be effectual for settling them-I
have told you that I am not concerned with in
this Lecture. But I may perhaps assist you in
understanding better what they are, if I wander
Conscience
merous
ous in
92
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
Illustra-
tion from
Slavery.
LECT. IV. for a moment beyond the limits of our own coun-
try. Suppose an American, living in one of what
American were then Slave States thirty years ago. He is
brought up under that discipline which Mr Bain
recommends for the formation of a Conscience.
He is taught to consider the slave as a chattel.
He has acquired all the habits which naturally
and necessarily develope themselves out of such a
belief, when it has become a belief. He perceives
the absurdity-the intense absurdity-of treating
a thing, a chattel, as capable of rights, as able to
The habits form contracts. Perhaps some religious notion
about the doom of a race helps to strengthen
the South. What would else have been merely the tradition
of a Society. Suddenly the question presents it-
self to him, 'Is the premiss from which the con-
'clusions I have accepted logically follow, a correct
'one? Is this creature a chattel? Do I stand in
'no relation to him? If not, clearly I have no
'duties to him; he has none to me.
If there is a
'relation that must involve duties.'
'branded'
into the
young of
Out of this
doubt cases of Conscience have proceeded, which
cannot be treated with indifference, for they have
produced a revolution in an immense Continent.
What I want you to notice is the turning point
Men con- in these cases. A Society has organised itself on
only in re- the ground of Property. We are possessors; as
Property. Such we are bound to each other. These creatures
templated
ference to
are simply possessions. The Society has taught
its members to look upon each other in this light,
to fraternise on this ground. The discovery of
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
93
between The pos-
sessor dis-
his own
superior covering
ground dignity as
which I have just spoken does not merely affect LECT. IV.
the Negro. Are there not relations
those who have called themselves the
race? Are not these Relations a deeper
of Society than Property can ever be? By ac-
knowledging the manhood of the black they
obtain a new conception of their own.
You will perceive that the question when it
takes this form may lead to cases of Conscience
affecting many beside the slave-owners in North
America; it may issue in a different belief respect-
ing the foundation of Society in all countries.
a man.
Before I leave this division of my subject Prudence.
I will say a word about the Prudence, of which
Mr Bain has written at great length. He con-
nects it with his idea of the Conscience. So do
I with mine. Prudence is the contracted form
of Providence. It means foresight. Now fore-
sight I believe will never be found to exist with-
out reflection or retrospection. The man looks
before and after. Till he learns to say 'I,' and
thence I ought,' he will exercise no retrospec-
tion; he will therefore exercise no prudence.
Whilst he is the slave of present impressions,
still more whilst he is under the dread of punish-
ments that a majority may inflict on him, he
cannot look forward; he dares not. This is a
very old opinion, inculcated by those who have
been most devoted to the cultivation of prudence. Edgeworth
You in these days do not know much of Miss of pruden-
Edgeworth's tales, or her books of Education, ty.
Miss
a teacher
tial morali-
94
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
But a
vigorous
against the
which con-
submission
of a Socie-
ty.
LECT. IV. Many of us old men were nurtured upon them.
In these works what is called heroical morality,
as well as what is called spiritual morality, was
passed over; they were almost exclusively devoted
to the formation of prudent habits. But so far
protestant was this accomplished lady from encouraging boys
morality or girls to follow the will or habits of a majority,
sists in that she evidently desired above all things to
to the will teach them the danger of that subjection. She
would have each one of them feel the necessity of
learning to say 'I ought' and 'I ought not;' on
no other terms did she see any chance of making
them prudent. To 'that higher grade of the
prudential motive' which a man or woman reaches
who has utterly accepted the yoke of Society and
determines to follow it wherever it leads, Miss
Edgeworth never aspired. Amidst many defects
which I have since discovered in her education
I cannot say how grateful I am to her for teaching
us that we should labour diligently not to seek
that elevation.
The Con-
science in
conflict
with the
maxims of
an age.
III. I come to the last class of cases of
which I proposed to speak. I can illustrate it
religious best by a familiar instance. The Greek fleet is
stayed at Aulis by contrary winds. An acknow-
ledged prophet declares that nothing will change
the wind but a Sacrifice. No Sacrifice will avail
but the daughter of Agamemnon. A power
which is declared to be divine, which the opinion
of the Greeks holds to be divine, imposes the
command. It is obeyed.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
95
Nam sublata virum manibus tremebundaque ad aras
Deducta est; non ut solemni more sacrorum
Perfecto posset claro comitari hymenæo,
Sed casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipso
Hostia concideret mactatu mosta parentis.
LECT. IV.
fice of
Whether the story is true or not, even if it The sacri-
and the whole Trojan war are to be consigned Iphigenia.
to the region of fable, it bears witness of facts
that were characteristic of the age to which it
was referred, and of many later ages; of facts
which belong to Greek history, to Hindoo history,
to the history of modern Europe. The poet who Horror of
recorded the tale of Iphigenia so brilliantly felt
as you know that it concerned his own nation
and his own time; otherwise it would not have
inspired him with such indignation, he would
not have uttered the passionate cry
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Lucretius.
an Order.
He believed that the Religion of Rome in
his own civilised period might persuade men, if
not to such a sacrifice as that of Iphigenia, yet
to very monstrous crimes. From a religion of His cry for
this kind-from the worship of capricious and
cruel gods-he fled to such notions of physics as
Epicurus could supply him with; he thought he
could discern the vestiges of an order in the
world without which these notions of a divine
government could not disturb.
This poet, then, who counted himself an Athe-
ist was demanding an Order; he was solemnly
protesting against that which seemed to him the
96
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV. transgression of an Order. Powers which per-
Will a
knowledge
of the
Nature of
Things
supply the
Order?
suaded to evil deeds he could not recognise, let
the claims which they put forth, let the terrors
of public opinion which enforced these claims, be
what they might.
This I hold to be a protest of the Conscience,
one which the poet would never have made if
there had not been a Conscience in him. Be-
cause there was that Conscience in him, I believe
he could never have been satisfied with those
hints of an outward Order which his Greek
teacher offered him; no not if those hints could
have ripened for him into the actual discoveries
of modern science. Still there would have been
the question, 'Is there not somewhere that which
ought to rule me?' still there would have been
the answer, 'These things ought not to rule me.'
As long as there is that terrible 'I,' there will
question, be the 'ought' linked to it; there will be the
demand, What am I? what therefore ought I
to do? And in that is implied, as Mr Bentham
and Mr Bain no less than any other philosophers
teach us, the further demand, 'What must I
obey?
The ever
recurring
What am
I ?
Vainly, therefore, are we told that if there
is a Conscience in each man that Conscience
must be its own standard, that the only escape
is to suppose a Conscience created by a Social
Opinion. All such propositions look very plau-
sible upon paper; bring them to the test of
living experience and they melt away. There
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
97
evil.
is that in me which asks for the Right, for that LECT. IV.
which ought to have dominion over me; there is
that in me which says emphatically, 'This is not Good and
'that Right, this ought not to have dominion
'over me.' I may be long in learning what the
Right is; I may make a thousand confused efforts
to grasp it; I may try to make it for myself; I
may let others make it for me. But always there
will be a witness in me that what I have made
or any one has made, is not what I ought to
serve; that is not the right, not what I am seek-
ing for, not what is seeking me.
Ought Ought I to
This class of Cases then lies beneath both
the others; they are derived from it; they enter
into it. The demands of Pleasure or of Nature
upon me, the demands of Society upon me, both
suggest cases of their own. But the case is that
which the Roman poet has raised. There are
powers which demand evil things of me.
I to acknowledge their demand? Very
rous are the cases which fall under this
complicated in various ways, taking different
forms in different times and places. But no one
who speaks of Casuistry at all can dare to evade
them, or must be hindered from handling them
through fear of the censures which he may incur
from one set of philosophers or another.
murder a
nume- child at the
head, Calchas?
It is easy to tell me that in former days men
believed in a number of evil powers, and that in
our days we have cast off such dark imaginations.
Whenever I read Macbeth with its blasted heath
bidding of
7
98
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV. and its witch scenery, I feel certain, that the
The legend story is essentially true; that no change of cir-
true for all cumstances or of opinions has made it less real,
of Macbeth
times.
shapes.
less tremendous for our time than for the time
in which it was composed. I know not anything
about stage hags, what they may be like, whether
they are men or women. But suggestions do come
to a man now as of old which he dallies with,
which mix with dreams of ambition that he has
been secretly cherishing, which seem to gain a
wonderful encouragement from unexpected events,
which are deepened by some counsellor less scru-
pulous than himself. And then come the op-
portunities for the crime, the first image of which
Did unfix his hair,
And made his seated heart knock at his ribs
Against the use of nature.
The invisi- Before it is done the Conscience which has been
ble taking
visible resisted within presents itself in outward visible
forms, the bloody dagger, the handle towards the
hand which cannot be clutched. After it is done
there rise before the imagination of the man ghast-
ly figures which recal those whom he has put out
of his way; the phantoms of superstition must
be laid by fresh acts which the former have made
desirable. The superstitions do not cease with
the dark deeds, they become more fixed, more in-
tense. 'There must be some rulers of my destiny;
'why should they not be evil rulers; why should
'these not be invoked?' But they cannot control
CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
99
the doom of their servant. Onward he goes to LECT. IV.
it. He hears that the Conscience of some sharer The end.
in his crime which had seemed unmoved when
his was quailing, has come forth in the hour
of sleep; that there has been a damned spot on
the hand which no water could wash out. And
then having supped full of horrors, and being in-
capable of tasting any more, he can only say,
Life is a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
That is an ower true tale for the reign of Victoria
as well as for the reign of Elizabeth or of
Duncan.
And so a poet of the 19th century felt it to
be. Do you know Lord Byron's Manfred? Have Manfred.
you read that wonderful play of the Conscience?
It has none of the variety of Macbeth; Byron had
not Shakspeare's power of making us see a number
of different men, each distinct in himself, each act-
ing on the thought and life of the others. The
interest is concentrated in the hero. For that
reason it serves our purpose better. No one who
reads it can believe it to be a mere work of
imagination. There is a burning individual experi-
ence in every sentence. Count Manfred has come His cir-
of an ancient line. His castle in the Alps. The stances.
monarch of mountains is continually before him.
He revels in the grand forms of Nature. But they
have become, like everything else, an oppression
to him. There is on him the burden of a great
cum-
Up
7-2
100
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IV. crime.
ers that
He has power over spirits.
They are
The pow- ready to do his bidding, to give him anything that
obey him. he asks. He asks forgetfulness. That is the one
What they thing they cannot give. What else is of any
give. worth to him? The form of her whom he has
cannot
Spirits of
darkness.
injured rises before him. What he has done is
clearer to him than ever before. He is on the
edge of a precipice. Why may he not throw
himself over it? What if he did? Will the vision
depart? A chamois hunter saves him and brings
him to his castle. At length the destined hour
arrives. A priest visits him in his dying hours,
a kindly well-intentioned man willing to use his
knowledge and the powers of his office for the
good of his fellow-creature. It is in vain. What
are subordinate agents to him? He is face to
face with the powers of good and of evil. Which
is the stronger? Which is to prevail?
Lord Byron, you see, is as little able as Shak-
speare to dispense with the aid of spirits. No
poet will be able who speaks of the struggles of
Conscience. Those struggles carry us into a region
beyond the visible world. It may be a region of
hags or of milder powers which can give us all
blessings except the one we want, deliverance
from the evil that haunts us.
Is there any purer
region, is there any better society, in which we
might dwell?
Is there any more effectual de-
liverer?
یه
LECTURE V.
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
I HAVE spoken to you of cases of Conscience. LECT. V.
From these the Casuist derives his name.
I come
now to the Rules by which Casuists have tried
to determine these cases.
viser in
medical
cases.
What has suggested these rules? A man who The ad-
is troubled with the questions, 'Ought I to do this? legal and
Ought I not to do that?' has just the same impulse
to seek for advice as the man who is engaged in
any controversy about property, or who is suffer-
ing from some bodily complaint. As I ask a
Lawyer who has studied books of cases, the judg-
ments which have been delivered upon them, the
general maxims or the particular statutes which
bear upon them, to tell me what is his opinion of
the particular case which I submit to him-cannot
I find one who will explain to me this debate
which is going on within me, who will say what is
the proper decision upon it? As I try to explain
the pains I have suffered, the symptoms which I
102
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. have observed in myself, to a physician, trusting
that his learning will suggest questions which may
draw out clearer statements from me than I have
been able to make, and that the same learning
will suggest remedies for what he has discovered to
be my disorder-cannot I, in like manner, make
some one understand the influences which sway
me to the right or to the left; cannot he make me
understand them better than I do; cannot he put
me on some method of dealing with them, so that
I may not continue in restless embarrassment, or
escape from it by some rash determination which
I may lament hereafter?
The Ad-
viser in
cases of
Con-
science.
The demand for such counsellers and prescrib-
ers has been great in all ages; the supply has
answered to the demand. Some of them have
been suggested to us by the circumstances of our
The Ca- birth, by the accident of our positions. A parent
right of who does not identify authority with punishment
sympathy. wins the confidence of his child in his wisdom
suist by
birth or
and in his affection. The less he tries to worm
any secrets from him the more frankly they are
told; the utterance of them is a relief for the pre-
sent, the reproof and the warning which follow a
help for the future. The friend, judicious or inju-
dicious, to whom we ascribe great discernment or
experience, is resorted to next; he may give us
hints which will shew us the way out of a confu-
sion, or he may make the confusion worse con-
founded; the knots of the conscience may be un-
tied or cut by his hands, or may be entangled
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
103
fessional
hopelessly. And then comes the professional di- LECT. V.
rector of the Conscience, to whom is assigned in The pro-
most countries of Christendom, by not a few men Casuist.
and women in our own, a divine capacity of pe-
netrating into the sources of the derangements
from which the Conscience is suffering, and of
administering the medicines which it requires.
Are such advisers, professional or unprofes-
sional, to be trusted, because they boast of these
experiences, and because they urge these great
claims? The Lawyer points to the Statute book,
to maxims which have been established for ages,
to a series of judgments the result of careful inves-
tigations by able men. The Physician appeals to
experiments upon the actual frame of man, to a
science ever expanding which rests on those expe-
riments. Has the director his books to which we Demand
may turn for the correction of his own private in- of rules.
stincts? Can he make us aware of the laws and
principles by which his opinions on special cases
are guided?
for books
the Casu-
The necessity for such books began to be very
loudly proclaimed in that very bookish century,
the 17th. It was affirmed that nothing could be Power of
more dangerous than to trust particular persons ist.
with the authority which they claimed to settle
questions affecting the life of states as well as
of individual men. He who could tell men what
they ought or ought not to do, what should be
their purposes as well as their acts, was exercising
a dominion which no king or parliament could
104
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. exercise, which might greatly interfere with the
dominion that kings and parliaments had a right
Danger of to exercise. It was found as a matter of fact
this power.
that the influence of Confessors and Directors over
the consciences of monarchs and statesmen, was
such as affected in a number of ways the con-
dition of nations: there was a complaint deep,
sometimes loud, that it did not cultivate in them
any special reverence for veracity and honourable
dealing. Let us know what the maxims of these
directors of the Conscience are, was the cry, what
rules they lay down for the acts and life of men.
There was, it must be owned, no tardiness in
answering this cry. The volumes recording Cases
of Conscience as well as solutions of the Cases and
rules for the guidance of the Conscience which
that age accumulated, would alarm you if I only
enumerated the titles of a few, more still if you
looked into them, far more if you were fairly to
examine their contents. I do not enjoin any such
task upon you, or recommend it. I do not think
that would be a fair way of testing the question,
whether Rules of the Conscience are ever likely
to be found which will settle Cases of the Con-
science. I who hold that none such ever have been
found or will be found, should think I was taking
an unfair advantage of you that I was bribing
you to support my opinion-if I drew my ex-
amples of them from books written in Latin, by
men of a different Church and a different Nation
from our own, many of whom besides have earned
Latin Ca-
suistry not
a fair test
of its
worth.
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
105
Taylor.
1
a very evil reputation through the denunciations LECT. V.
of eminent divines of their own Church, some-
times of their own nation. But if I could light
upon a set of Rules for the Conscience, drawn
out with care and elaboration by an English Jeremy
Churchman, who desired especially to avoid the
errors into which Casuists abroad had fallen,
a man open to no suspicion of being dull or crab-
bed, a man whose character as well as his intellect
has stood the trial of more than one century and
commanded the admiration of the most opposite
schools, those rules I should regard as offering
safe materials for an experiment. Our illustrious
Bishop Taylor fulfils all the conditions which I
have enumerated. He did not write in a hard His style.
scholastical dialect, but was master of the most co-
pious and picturesque of English styles. He was
so various in his ways of contemplating subjects,
his erudition was derived from such a number of
sources, that nearly every man whatever his
opinions may be, whatever his education may
have been, will recognise something in Taylor to
countenance his theories and to meet his tastes.
The Romanist, the Protestant, the most vehement His catho-
defender of the right of men to speak out their
thoughts, let them be ever so much opposed to es-
tablished doctrines, may each point to works of the
Bishop in which his leading maxims are learnedly
and eloquently enforced. Yet his mind did not
vacillate either from feebleness or from self-
interest. He yielded to the force of arguments,
licity.
106
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
goodness.
LECT. V. and could put them forth with the dexterity of a
special pleader, also with undoubted conviction
of their soundness; his attachment to his own
Church was strongest when it was in trouble and
His love of persecution. An intense sympathy with goodness,
an indifference to everything which he could not
connect with goodness or which he did not
suppose ministered to it directly or indirectly, was
his great characteristic; he could romanise or
protest against Romanism, he could be tolerant
or intolerant, just as he believed that the interests
of goodness were furthered by one mode of think-
ing, by one course of action, or the other.
tor Dubi-
tantium.
Among all the works of Jeremy Taylor, that
to which he undoubtedly devoted the most of his
The Duc toil and his learning was his Ductor Dubitantium,
or the Rule of Conscience. He engaged in it
when he was in the ripeness of his powers,
when he had leisure to gather up the treasures
of his thought and reading; all that he had
learnt from Jewish Rabbis, from Greek Trage-
dians, Comedians, Historians and Philosophers,
from Roman Orators and Jurists, from the
Fathers, from the Schoolmen of the middle ages,
from the Jesuits and from those who had op-
posed the Jesuits in his own day. He had the
strongest sense of the mischiefs which mankind
Its objects. had suffered from the foreign Casuists who had
obtained most influence in deciding moral ques-
tions. "Though by violence and force," he ex-
claims, "they have constrained their Churches
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
107
"into a union of faith, like beasts into a pound, LECT. V.
"yet they have made their cases of Conscience
"and the actions of their lives unstable as the
"face of the waters, and immeasurable as the
"dimensions of the moon." He was anxious to Desire to
be practi-
provide the Reformed Churches "with a semi- cal.
"nation and culture which were much wanted
"in them; for our labours, he says, have hitherto
"been unemployed in the description of the rules
"of Conscience and of casuistical Theology." He
knew, he says,
"that all practical truths were to
"be found out without much contradiction and
'dispute, but that what God had made plain
"men had intricated, and the easy commandment
"was wrapped up in uneasy learning."
""
the book.
The sincerity of Taylor's intention to provide
a real aid to his countrymen in their daily prac-
tice, and an escape from the sophistries by which
they had been turned into disputers, is evident
from every page of his work as well as from the
tenour of his life. Circumstances seemed to con-
spire with his design. He had composed his book Time of
in what he considered a period of trouble and
desolation; his preface is dated 'from my study
in Portmore in Kilultagh' the year before the
Restoration. But he was able to dedicate his Dedication
labours, To the Most Sacred Majesty of Charles II.
King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, De-
fender of the Faith. "We have been," he could
say, "sorely smitten and for a long time...But
"now our duty stands on the sunny side, it is our
of it
108
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
the loyal.
LECT. V. "work to rejoice in God and in God's Anointed,
"and to be glad and worthily to accept of our
The joy of "prosperity is all our business.... It was impossible
"to live without our King, but as slaves live
"such as are civilly dead, and persons condemned
"to the metals; we lived to the lusts and in-
"solvency of others, not at all to ourselves, to our
"own civil and religious comforts. But now our
"joys are mere and unmixed, for that we may do
'our duty and have our reward at once, God
"hath sent your Majesty amongst us that we
"may feel the pleasures of obedience, and reap
‘the fruits of that government which God loves
"and uses." Then having modestly asked His
Majesty to accept his two mites as a signification
of his joy; he adds this reason for his choice of
Prospects a gift, "For your Majesty being by God appointed
reign. "Custos utriusque tabulæ, since like Moses you are
of the new
Plan of
the book.
-
66
66
"descended to us with the two tables of the law
"in your hand, and that you will best govern by
"the arguments and compulsory of Conscience,
"and this alone is the greatest firmament of obe-
dience, whatsoever be the measure of Conscience
"res est fisci, is part of your own propriety and
“enters into your exchequer.”
The work which this Dedication introduces is
divided into four Books. The first treats of Con-
science, the kinds of it and the general Rules of
conducting them. Under this head we hear of the
Right or Sure Conscience, of the Confident or Er-
roneous Conscience, of the Probable or Thinking
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
109
of Con-
Conscience, of the Doubtful Conscience, of the LECT. V.
Simple Conscience. The two following are on Division
Laws natural, human and divine; the fourth is on sciences.
the Nature and Causes of Good and Evil, their
limits and circumstances, their aggravations and
diminutions. The dedication and the division will
shew you how seriously Taylor engaged in his
task; what pains he bestowed upon it. I hope to
derive valuable lessons from both. But I am
afraid one of the lessons will be, that Rules of the
Conscience even when they are unfolded with the
greatest ability by a thoroughly good earnest
practical man, are unfavourable to goodness and
earnestness, and are not helpful in practice. I do
not think Taylor's labour was wasted if it demon-
strated this point; if it shewed where we cannot
turn for aid in our straits. Such a man however
will not leave us to a merely negative conclusion.
There are hints scattered throughout his book
which, if we use them aright, may tell us what
we do want, though all the most skilfully framed
rules should fail us.
of the Con-
I. As Taylor proposes to treat of the Con- Definition
science and its different kinds he begins with a science.
definition of the Conscience. It is this.
It is this. Con- !
science is the mind of a man governed by a Rule
and measured by the proportions of Good and
Evil, in order to Practice, viz. to conduct all our
Relations, and all our intercourse between God,
our neighbours, and ourselves; that is in all
moral actions. A most difficult passage surely to
110
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
tion ex-
LECT. V. construe; a definition which requires a number
The defini- of definitions to make it intelligible. Without
amined. striving to devise such definitions let us consider
how it will meet the wants of a man in any per-
plexity about that which he ought or ought not
to do.
Supposed
'Conscience is the mind of a man.' But cries
with a man the man, 'I have two minds. I am drawn two
dialogue
seeking
help.
ways. I want to know what mind I should be of,
which way
I should take. That is the
That is the very doubt
'which has brought me to your book.' The answer
would be, 'Do not you perceive what I am telling
'you? Conscience is the mind of a man governed
by a rule.' 'Just so,' would be the rejoinder, ‘it
'is the Rule that I have come to seek for. I
'want a rule to tell me which of my two minds
'is the proper mind.' 'We shall come to that
'presently. I am going to furnish you with a set
of Rules for all different cases.' "Excellent!
'I shall rejoice to hear them. But just now I am
'occupied with this case. How am I to decide
'that?' "It must be measured by the propor-
'tions of good and evil.' 'I am sure it must,
'and you will teach me to apply the measures;
'you will shew me what these proportions are.'
'All in due time. Towards the end of my treatise
'you will have rules about the nature and causes
'of good and evil.' 'Yes, but I have something
'which I must do, or leave undone, now.' 'That
'is most desirable. All these measures and rules
' and proportions are in order to Practice.' 'Must
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
111
'I defer my action then till I have made myself LECT. V.
'master of them all?' 'If I tell you how to
'conduct all your relations towards God, your
neighbour, and yourself, that is all moral actions,
'you will surely be able to find out the propriety
'or impropriety of this particular action.' Tay-
lor, however, would not leave his poor client or
patient in the utter despair which such an an-
nouncement must produce. He would tell him The result.
of various cases through which A, and B, and C
and D had passed. He would tell him that A
had a confident Conscience, B a doubtful Con-
science, C a probable or thinking Conscience,
Da scrupulous Conscience. And mine, which is
'it of all these?' 'Oh, you shall have rules which
'may enable you to discover that point.' 'And
6
'then I shall want more rules to know how to
use the rules that fitted the case of A or B or
'C or D.'
pulous
science.
Let us take one instance, that of the scrupu- The scru-
lous Conscience to see how this will work. Under Con-
rule I. we read this: "A scruple is a great trouble
"of mind proceeding from a little motive, and
a great indisposition, by which the Conscience
66
66
though sufficiently determined by proper argu-
"ments dares not proceed to action, or if it do it
"cannot rest." An admirable description, who is
not able to verify it in his own experience? It is
further illustrated by these lively remarks. "Very
"often it hath no reason at all for its induce-
"ment; but proceeds from indisposition of body,
Um
112
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. "pusillanimity, melancholy, a troubled head, sleep-
"less nights, the society of the timorous, from
of it.
66
66
solitariness, ignorance, or unseasoned imprudent
"notices of things, indigested learning, strong
"fancy or weak judgment, from anything that
may abuse the reason into irresolution and rest-
Felicitous "lessness. It is indeed a direct walking in the
description
“dark where we see nothing to affright us, but
'we fancy many things, and the fantasms pro-
“duced in the lower regions of fancy, and nursed
"by folly, and borne upon the arms of fear do
"trouble us. But if reason be its parent, then
"it is born in the twilight, and the mother is so
"little that the daughter is a fly with a short
"head and a long sting, enough to trouble a
"wise man, but not enough to satisfy the ap-
'petite of a little bird. The reason of a scruple
"is ever as obscure as the light of a glowworm,
"not fit to govern any action, and yet is suf
"ficient to stand in the midst of all its enemies,
"and like the flies of Egypt, vex and trouble a
"whole army." You see how charmingly Taylor
writes when he forgets his rules and gives him-
self to painting pictures which was his proper
occupation. There is not a page of his book
which will not furnish you with some exquisite
gem of this kind sometimes taken from an older
writer and made far better by its setting, some-
times derived from the stores of his own imagi-
nation, good for use if we will search for it, as
well as for ornament. But when we return from
Works,
Vol. XII.
p. 174.
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
113
66
impotent
p. 180.
always
man to a
such flights to those rules which are in order to LECT. V.
practice, the solutions are so puzzling that the Lame and
author is driven to say-"God hath appointed conclusion,
"spiritual persons guides of souls whose office is
"to direct and comfort, to refresh the weary and
"to strengthen the weak, to confirm the strong
'and to instruct the doubtful, and therefore to use
"their advice is the proper remedy which God
"hath appointed." That may be so; but were not Men will
these rules of Conscience drawn up expressly be- prefer a
cause these guides of souls had "made the cases of rule.
"conscience and the actions of men's lives as un-
“stable as the water and immeasurable as the
"dimensions of the moon"? Can it be the ulti-
mate resource to fall back upon them, to confess
that the rules are impotent without them, and
that the final appeal must be to their wisdom?
And yet if the comparison is between rules and
the very lowest kind of human sympathy, the
man who is in any difficulty will choose the lat-
ter. If he is not able to find the amount of illu-
mination which he craves for, he will suppose that
there must be some one in whom it dwells and
to whose guidance he can fully trust himself.
Whatever delusion there is in that opinion, Taylor
has not shewn us the way out of it; he has done
much to strengthen it.
Rules
the first
about tested by
rules class of
If what I have said to you before
the Conscience is true, the failure of such
was inevitable. Try them by any of the cases
which I spoke in my last lecture. A man is dis- Pleasure.
Cases-
of those con-
cerning
8
114
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. posed to indulge in certain pleasures, say of the
appetite. He doubts whether he ought to in-
dulge them, whether they will not interfere with
his health or his work. The physician may give
him some hints about the first; about the second
he knows better himself than any one can tell
him. General rules will only lead him to that
comparison of his own case with others which
issued, as I observed, in so many bewilderments,
TheResult; in such insincerity of practice. The rules will
perpetual
vacillation. prescribe for a multitude; what he wants is a
prescription for himself. He will therefore do as
Taylor bids him. He will ask the spiritual guide
to interpret the rules, to apply them to his
circumstances. And then he may be involved in
all that system of alternate severities and indul-
gences, the perils of which induced Taylor to
undertake his treatise. The passage from sound
Asceticism to the Asceticism which glorifies pain
for its own sake, to the Asceticism which reckons
how much pleasure or exemption from pain can
be secured by the relinquishment of pleasure or
the endurance of pain, will be promoted not
hindered by the formal rule as well as by the
special expounders of it.
Cases of
obedience
dience
to social
maxims.
So in those cases which regard Society, Taylor
or disobe proposed to lay down rules which may help us
to conduct all our relations. I said that a man
often finds himself in circumstances which lead
him to ask, 'Ought I to do what the Corpora-
'tion of which I am a member commands? Can
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
115
siastical
'I fulfil my relations to this man or that set of LECT. V.
'men if I do?' Of all the abuses to which the
Casuistry of spiritual doctors had led, and which
Taylor desired to correct, there were none so
great and scandalous as those which concerned
this subject. The ecclesiastical Corporation of
Christendom had taught with pertinacity the
lesson which had a Jewish origin. "If a man The eccle-
shall say to his father and mother, It is Cor- Corban.
ban, that is to say, a gift, (to some ecclesi-
astical treasury) he need no more do ought for
his father and mother." The maxim of the So-
ciety had been used to disparage the relation in
which the man found himself at his birth. So
again the maxim that no faith is to be kept
with heretics, is just as legitimate a deduction
from the principle that the heretic stands in no
relation to those who have excommunicated him,
as the doctrine that there can be no contract
with a slave is from the principle that the
slave is a chattel. But could any rules about
men's relations counteract, even in the smallest
degree, theories of this kind or the acts and
habits which were justified by them? The rela-
tions must be closer to the man than the rules
can ever be; if he makes them dependent upon
rules he renounces them. He will ask what Rules will
acts or gifts will compensate the neglect of care teract it.
for the father and mother; pecuniary compen-
sations will occur to him as the most natural,
since the money scales will be those in which he
not coun-
8-2
116
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. has learned to weigh all affections. And the So-
ciety which he has been taught to regard as that
which adjusts compensations and as more sacred
than all others will be the one to receive the
offerings. The rules will be found inoperative,
the man with the doubtful conscience will go to
the guide of souls to interpret them, and that
will be the result.
Third case;
commands
to be
divine.
So again in those more tremendous cases,
pretending of which the sacrifice of Iphigenia furnished us
with an instance, no one knew better than
Taylor how little directors of the Conscience
were to be trusted; no one would have tried
more zealously to find some rules which might
avert the tragedies they had caused. But it is
just in these very cases that the force of rules
is scattered to the winds. How can they be
alleged against a claim which is said to have
proceeded from a superhuman authority? That
must override all rules devised by men; it comes
forth with the boast that it can. It is to a
power which owns no rules that the father sur-
renders his daughter.
In what
circum-
stances
be profit-
able.
Why then do men who strive to be prac-
tical, as Taylor strove in the best sense of the
rules may word-why do men who claim to be practical
in a much lower sense than his-agree in liking
rules which, on this shewing, are not prac-
tical, but the reverse of practical? The expla-
Rules have a use of their own
nation is this.
which it would
be absurd and ungrateful to
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
117
behaviour
ciples of
deny. There are many points in a man's de- LECT. V.
meanour towards his fellowmen which without Difference
any evil intention on his part, nay, when his maxims of
intentions are full of kindness, may irritate and and prin-
wound them. There are many influences which life.
he may receive from them, through the very
frankness and openness of his disposition, which
may do him harm. The maxims and rules of
experience are directed most beneficially to these
particulars of conduct. They are often effectual
when we meet with them in books applied to
persons, real or imaginary, whose blemishes and
awkwardnesses remind us of our own. They are
more likely to be effectual when they come from
the lips of some parent or judicious friend; then
they bear upon us with the momentum of affec-
tion and prudence combined; the Conscience re-
cognises them in recognising the voice which
utters them. But the parent or friend if he
is wise as well as prudent, if he is not a
stranger to inward struggles,—will not apply such
admonitions to any of those great debates of the
man with himself which give the force and in-
terpretation to the word Conscience. He will
understand that these affect the resolution to act,
not the mode or shape which the action shall
take when it has been resolved on.
the man
I would illustrate this difference from the play Polonius
of Hamlet. Old Polonius is a man of great ex- of maxims.
perience, within certain limits he is a man of
prudence. He is moreover kind-hearted, a good
118
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
maxims
LECT. V. father, full of affection for his son and daughter,
though inclined to be fussy with them as with
everybody. He is taking leave of Laertes, who is
Where the on his way to France. What lessons can be more
have force. sensible, more likely to impress themselves on
the memory of a dutiful son, exaggerating, as
it became him to do, his father's knowledge of
the world, than these rules? They are familiar
to you of course; still I will read them.
Where
they be-
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
Beware
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-To thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!
But this same Polonius tries to penetrate the
temptible. secret of a man whose Conscience is engaged in a
come con-
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
119
fearful struggle, with whom 'To be or not to be' LECT. V.
is the question. What becomes of his rules and
maxims then? Hamlet calls him a prating med-
dlesome fool and we ratify his opinion. The
sagacious counsellor, the well-trained diplomatist,
has ventured into a region of which he knows
nothing. He has tried his ordinary rules and They may
plummets, and they fail ludicrously. He has no rages on
resource but in the vulgarest cunning,-in expe- science.
dients which must have struck the better man
that was in him as grovelling and which seem
to us as foolish as they were mean.
lead to out-
the Con-
Tables.
II. From these instances of the use of rules The two
I might pass very easily to the two books of
Taylor on Laws, natural, human and divine. But
I should only bewilder you if I drew you into
these distinctions before I led you to reflect on
Law itself, and its relation to the Conscience.
Another lecture must be devoted to that sub-
ject. I will not however leave the one in which
we have been engaged without giving you a
hint or two chiefly drawn from the experience
of Taylor's time, partly illustrated by our own,
which may help you to perceive the enormous
difference between Rules and Laws. Charles the Charles II.
Second, Taylor tells us, descended like Moses of rules,
with the two Tables of the Law in his hand.
Like Moses he broke both those Tables; only
not through horror of the idolatry and the re-
velries to which he saw his people inclined,
rather because the Tables inconveniently forbad
no enemy
120
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. the idolatry and the revelries.
of Law.
Rules of the Con-
science, with all the exceptions and indulgences
which rules involve, he could approve; rules he
would enforce upon the Consciences of his sub-
But a hater jects. It was only the Law which bound sub-
jects and monarch both that he cast aside.
Some of you may have looked this summer at
Mr Frith's picture of the scene in Whitehall
the night before Charles' last illness of which
Evelyn was witness; most of you will have read
Lord Macaulay's description of that scene. Com-
pare that with Taylor's dedication, and you will
have some notion of that government by the ar-
guments and compulsory of the Conscience which
the year 1660 was to inaugurate.
The
Awakened
Con-
science.
Mr Frith's elaborate design recalls to me one
by another artist, which I like better to think
of and which, if as sad in itself, contains a more
hopeful moral. I do not know how many of
you may have seen Mr Holman Hunt's picture
of the Awakened Conscience. Those who have
seen will not I fancy have forgotten it. There is
not the crowd of figures which distract us in the
Whitehall group. There are only two, a man and
a woman sitting in a somewhat gaudily furnished
room beside a piano. His fingers are on the in-
strument. His face, which is reflected in a mirror,
is handsome and vacant, evidently that of a man
about town who supposes the brightest part of
creation is intended to minister to his amusement.
A music book on the floor is open at the words,
RULES OF THE CONSCIENCE.
121
'Oft in the stilly night.' That tune has struck LECT. V.
some chord in his companion's heart. Her face
of horror says what no language could say, 'That
tune has told me of other days when I was not as
I am now.' The tune has done what the best
rules that ever were devised could not do. It
has brought a message from a father's house.
Windsor
This excellent artist has drawn me away for
a moment from the age of Charles II., remind-
ing me that events which were passing in that
time are repeated in ours—that the laws of both
times are the same—I return from his picture to a The
series which represents most truly the same period beauties.
as Mr Frith's. They are those which hang round
the state apartments in Windsor Castle. They
commemorate the beauties who once shone in the
Court of the Restoration. Those portraits some-
times exhibit a life like that which Lord Byron de-
scribes as still lingering over the faces of the dead;
sometimes only the blankness and dreariness of
death. But taken in connection with Mr Hunt's
sketch I cannot help dreaming that some one of
these may have listened to Taylor's brilliant and
terrible eloquence, may have even practised not
a few of his rules,-yet continuing in the same
bondage as before, and then may in some note of
other days, some snatch of forgotten music, have
heard a mightier voice saying, "Loose her, and
let her go."
III. If that is but a dream, at least it is one Degrees of
which forbids me to speak of Taylor's book about Evil.
Good and
122
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. V. Good and Evil, their nature and causes, their
limits and circumstances, their aggravations and
diminutions. For the poor woman with an
awakened Conscience must have said, 'Talk not
'to me of limits and circumstances, of aggravations
Good and 'and diminutions. These are two powers to which
'I must yield up my soul and body.' I am sure
Taylor would have said in his inmost heart as a
man, whatever he may have written in a Ductor
Dubitantium, 'By one of these I will hold for
'ever, against the other I will fight for ever.'
Evil as
Powers.
LECTURE VI.
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
two Con-
WE are very familiar with the phrase 'Liberty LECT. VI.
of Conscience.' We hear it from panegyrists Are there
of England who boast that we have more of it sciences?
than other nations, from Sects which complain
that they are deprived of it. Is the Conscience
of which these panegyrists and these complainers
speak the one with which Casuistry is occupied ?
TI
In Butler's Discourses on Human Nature, the Con-
science is largely discussed. Are there any sen-
tences in these discourses that suggest the thought
which this phrase suggests to those who repeat
it?
As I have especially desired to shew you that
the Conscience has no technical signification which
is distinct from its signification in every day life,
I must be anxious to relieve your minds from a Evil of the
doubt of this kind. The study of Casuistry must there are.
notion that
124
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LEOT. VI. be mischievous if it leads us to the use of words in
The doc-
trine that
the Con-
science
must al-
ways be in
each man
not to be
double senses, if it establishes a school nomencla-
ture which is composed out of the words that are
current in the world, and which puts on them an
entirely different stamp. It may be very useful
if it brings ordinary words to some test, if it re-
deems them from the service of clubs and plat-
forms where they acquire a sense just as artificial,
departed just as misleading as any which a College Lec-
turer could impose on them. Be sure that Liberty
of Conscience is a sacred expression, however much
it may have been profaned. But is it not a poli-
tical expression? Does it not point to the policy
of statesmen, and of the nations which they direct?
It may have much to do with their policy. What
it has to do with that I believe we shall not un-
derstand unless we first understand what it has to
from.
The phrase
Conscience
do with you and me. I have treated the Consci-
ence, its cases and its rules, in reference to each
of us, distinctly. Unless each of us called himself
an I, the Conscience I have said would signify
nothing. Only by remembering that position have
I been able to get any glimpse of light respect-
ing the Liberty of Conscience.
But if I adhere strictly to my method, I must
of Liberty begin by changing this form of speech; by invert-
ing it. I have never allowed myself to lose sight
of the origin of the word Conscience. Though I
have distinguished it from Consciousness, and
shown you how utterly unlike the Self-conscious
man is to the Conscientious man, I have always
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
125
6
ed to dis-
other.
treated them as kindred words. In examining LECT. VI.
Taylor's definition of the Conscience, it became not intend-
evident that we should fall into inextricable con- place the
fusion if we let the plain etymology escape, and
translated the Conscience into a mind governed
'by a rule.' The Conscience of Liberty is therefore
for me a more intelligible phrase than Liberty of
Conscience. I would not part with that. We
cannot safely part with any form of speech which
has been accepted as a veritable utterance of their
thoughts by our ancestors and our contemporaries.
I shall hope to enter more thoroughly into their
meaning if you allow me for a little while to pur-
sue my own course.
adopted.
The advantage which I gain by the change is why it is
this. I do not wish to assume that the Consci-
ence is something good in itself. Taylor talks, as
I told you, of a scrupulous Conscience, a doubtful
Conscience, a confident Conscience. Most men
have talked of an evil Conscience. Horace says:
Hic murus aheneus esto
Nil conscire sibi, nullâ pallescere culpâ.
thets af-
the Con-
He deems it a protection for a man to be free Bad epi-
from the conscience of faults which make him fixed to
turn pale. Those who dwell on the misery of science.
an accusing Conscience endorse his opinion. We
cannot neglect any of these hints. They all be-
token some actual experience; they have all their
worth in practice. The words 'Liberty of Consci-
ence,' taken by themselves, still more when taken
with their ordinary associations, seem to intimate
126
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VI. that the Conscience left to itself is always grand
and glorious, incapable of debasement or degrada-
tion. No such impression is conveyed by the
words Conscience of Liberty. They do not im-
The Con- port that there may not be also a Conscience of
Slavery. Slavery. The very first remark which I shall
have to make in considering them is, that there
always will be a Conscience of Slavery where
there is a Conscience of Liberty.
science of
(1) Mr Bentham has taught us to despise the
Stoics, calling them Ascetics, and saying that they
preferred Pain to Pleasure. I have admitted that
there were Stoics who deserved his censures, who
did learn to regard Pain with a certain compla-
cency, as if it were a gocd in and for itself; who
glorified themselves on the endurance of it. I
did not admit that either Asceticism or Stoicism
necessarily involved this honour to pain, or this
Bentham's vanity in the choice of it. I did not think the
the Stoics. essence of the doctrine or of the practice lay
attack on
in the abuse of it. For ourselves I maintained
that those were in greatest danger of sliding into
the least profitable kinds of Stoical Asceticism
who had accepted the doctrine that Pleasure
and Pain are our Sovereigns most cordially,
and had acted upon it most habitually. In
revenge for the injuries to health and for the
imbecility which had been the fruits of indul-
gence, they were apt to plunge headlong into
a scorn of enjoyment, an entertainment of pe-
nances and tortures.
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
127
of it if ap-
School uni-
If I had gone further into the question his- LECT. VI.
torically, I might have told you that the vulgarest Unfairness
Stoics were to be found.among some of the Greek plied to the
Professors of the theory, who merely maintained versally.
it as a theory against Epicureans or other op-
posers, and that there were among their Roman
disciples men who were not professors but prac-
tisers, who did not care for the theory except as it
helped them to do what they believed they were
appointed to do to suffer what they were ap-
pointed to suffer. In such men I have thought, as
most students have thought, that there was along
with some error and weakness great nobleness.
After listening to the denunciations of Mr Ben-
tham against all who dare to hold that opinion,
I think so still.
I am going to speak to you of one of these Epictetus.
men. He belongs to the period of the Roman
Empire. He cannot be called a Greek though
he spoke and wrote in Greek. He cannot be
called a Roman, for he was a slave, the slave of
a freedman of Nero. You are familiar with the
name of Epictetus. His Enchiridion, or that col-
lection of his sayings which is abridged from the
reports of him by Arrian, may almost I suppose
be called a school-book. I remember reading it as
a boy, without much profit. If I had recurred to
it as a young man I think it might have done
me some service, at least might have made me
ashamed of what I was, and of what a heathen
slave was able to be.
128
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VI.
Unquestionably he had all the Conscience of
The slave Slavery which a man in his condition could have.
pitying the
Emperor. He was born in that condition. Could he rise
out of it? What a chasm separated him even
from his master Epaphroditus! who could mea-
sure that which separated him from the Emperor
of whom that master was the freedman? Shall
he fill the world with his groans that he cannot be
like Nero; that an irresistible fate has made one
the king over all kings, and the other not even
a citizen? Epictetus has sent down to us not his
groans but his thanksgivings, that he was not
bound to be a slave such as he perceived Nero
was; that, being Epictetus, he might enjoy free-
dom if he did not cast it away. For this he said
was slavery, to be the victim of the representa-
tions made to the senses,—of all the impressions
The source which we receive from without. To this ignomi-
nious state of bondage Nero was reduced. Able to
command all pleasures, able to decline all pains,
the poor man was the passive victim of the things
about him; he was sinking lower and lower under
their dominion; he was less and less able to assert
himself. If Epictetus was a slave, submission to
be a slave. these impressions, not the power of a master to
send him to the metals or to inflict chastisement on
him, was the cause of his slavery. If he did not
fasten the chains upon himself, no one else could
put them on him; he had the key of the prison doors.
That is the Stoicism of Epictetus. It is the
Stoicism of a man with an intense conscience of
of Slavery.
No man
forced to
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
129
no wor-
opinions,
himself,
slavery, with an intense conscience of freedom. LECT. VI.
Mere opinions, call them Stoical or any other, Epictetus
he would have dismissed as bewildering like the shipper of
impressions on his senses, if they did not shew
him his way to the freedom-for which he felt that
he was intended-which was implied in his being
as a man, though all his circumstances were ever
so much conspiring to enslave him. And do not
suppose that there was in him that arrogant notion
of his own power to defy his circumstances and
his nature which we commonly ascribe to the
Stoic. The question with him was too real a nor of
one-it too intimately and directly concerned
him to allow of his deluding himself with any
vain pretensions. If one moment he maintain-
ed that the key of his prison was in his own
keeping-in other words, that he could not be a
slave unless he yielded to the impressions which
made him one-he asserted as strongly the next
that he must turn for deliverance to a god who
was near him, and watching over him. If he
could not trust his impressions, he could not
trust himself. He must have a helper, who was nor of
higher than himself, who cared more for him and Pain.
than he cared for himself, who knew him better
than he knew himself. Epictetus the Heathen
did not worship Pain or Pleasure or Nature or
any modification of these, however he might be
confused by the notions which he had been taught
respecting Gods of Pleasure and Pain, or Gods
that were merely Powers of Nature. He con-
Pleasure
9
130
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
for a divine
deliverer
from the
impres-
sions of
sense.
LECT. VI. fessed amidst all perplexities a God over himself,
He sought who would set him free from the tyranny of Pain
and Pleasure. I wish that all of us who are called
Christians had as strong a faith in such a God as
he had. Here is an instance of the Conscience of
Liberty existing beside the Conscience of Slavery;
an instance which encourages us to believe that the
most outwardly unpropitious circumstances may be
the means of leading a man to know what his state
is and to claim it. Mr Hunt's picture, of which I
spoke in the last Lecture, extended that observa-
tion to a woman who had fallen into the most
ignominious servitude,-servitude to her own pas-
sions, and to one in greater bondage than herself.
The recollection of liberty, the hope of liberty,
may come to any, as Epictetus said, who find
that there is a stronger force within than the
likings and impressions which fasten them to out-
ward things. The Conscience is bidding each of
us seek for that liberty; we cannot be content
till we have found it.
The Con-
science of
Social
Slavery
and of a
from it.
(2) It is exceedingly difficult in practice, as
both these examples may shew, to separate the
tyranny of Pleasure from the tyranny of Society.
deliverance They weave together silken chains, which mere
strength will never rend asunder. It may be as
hard for the Roman slave or the English slave
to defy the fashion and the contempt of the
Society in which they dwell, as to overcome their
own inclinations. I hinted when I was speaking
of Cases of Conscience, that the Conscience of
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
131
Aurelius.
Obligation, which is only another word for the LECT. VI.
Conscience of Relations, was the great antagonist
power to this Social oppression. The victim feels,
'I cannot be a member of Society unless I set at
'nought the maxims and decrees of Society.' A Marcus
very remarkable example of this rebellion is af-
forded by a man, not far removed in time from
Epictetus, sharing many of his habits of thought,
in a position more unfavourable, as Epictetus
deemed, to freedom than his own; for instead of
being the slave of an Emperor's freedman, he
was himself an Emperor.
to be a
Roman.
I speak of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He
wrote in Greek; he dwelt in all the effeminacy of
a Court. But he desired above all things, he says, The desire
to be a male and a Roman. What he meant by male and a
that we can understand from his acts, and also
from his thoughts; for he is one of those who has
let us look into the secrets of his life; who has
told us what he was striving to be, and what
helps and hindrances he met with in his strivings.
He had evidently taken account of the causes
which had made the Roman a ruler of the world.
He had seen that self-restraint had been one
main secret of his power; that reverence for the
relations in which he found himself had been
another. Out of both had come the habit of What it
obedience; that obedience was involved in the
oath of the soldier; that obedience was the only
security for the fidelity of the citizen. The Roman
had been inferior to the Greek, Marcus saw, in
meant.
9-2
132
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VI. the quickness of his perceptions, in his power
The secret of interpreting nature. He appreciated the words
of Roman
power and of Anchises,
degrada-
tion.
Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra
Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus
Orabunt causas melius, cælique meatus
Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent
Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento
Hæ tibi erunt artes.
But what had become of the Arts which had led
to this supremacy? Where was the reverence for
fathers, the sacredness of the hearth, the devotion
of the wife? Where was the security that the
soldier would not feel that his weapons were much
mightier than his oath; that the citizen would not
feel that every other citizen stood in his way?
Civil wars had rent the Commonwealth in pieces.
The habits An Empire had succeeded it. The rulers of the
under the world had felt that they were its gods, and that
of Society
Empire.
Struggle a-
gainst this.
the business of gods was to draw all the amuse-
ment they could out of it, to inflict all the misery
they might upon it. There had been a tradition
of such habits and opinions. The atmosphere of
the Empire was impregnated with them. To re-
sist them was to resist that education by which,
as Mr Bain says, Society brings its pupils into
consent with its opinions and its tone.
Marcus Aurelius did resist this Education.
His whole life, at home and abroad, was one con-
tinuous effort against it. He aimed at freedom
through self-government, through that triumph
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
133
than
to belpers
struggle.
For The Empe-
that ception of
ror's con-
over external influences and over his own ten- LECT. VI.
dencies which Mr Bentham would have called
Asceticism, though no one deprecated more
Marcus any useless or affected Asceticism. Spe- Gratitude
cially he aimed at it by the cultivation of reve- in the
rence for all those to whom he was united by ties
of blood, or ties of service. Under that last name
he included those who had served him and those
whom he was appointed to serve. Nothing that
I know is more touching than his enumeration of
the debts which he owed to his mother, to his pre-
decessor who had adopted him, to his instructors
in every department, to the friends who had pre-
served him from any flattery, who had given
him hints for the fulfilment of any duty.
Duty meant to him exactly the reverse of
it means in the philosophy of Mr Bain. It
literally that which, under no dread of punish-
ment but with great thankfulness, he confessed
to be due from him. He was aware of the temp-
tation to neglect it; that was the slavish impulse;
freedom to perform it was what he sought with
all earnestness. To aid his purpose of being a The philo-
Roman he would avail himself of the helps his court.
which Greek professors of philosophy could af-
ford him, admiring those who frequented his court
far more than they deserved, humbly using the
books which they or their predecessors had com-
piled, always shunning the display for which so
many of them were eager, not caring to decide
about the claims of their different schools, but
was
Duty.
sophers of
134
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VI. ready to learn from any of them if they warn
him of any insincerity to which he was exposed,
for little
things.
or show him a better way than he knew of guid-
His care ing his character and shaping his actions. Phi-
losophy was never an excuse to him for avoiding
troublesome business; he denounces in words that
make many of us quiver the disposition which
private men, as much as Emperors, feel not to an-
swer letters, or to keep suitors waiting. He had
a conscience of the bondage into which we bring
ourselves by the neglect of little things; he would
have accepted those grand words of our poet in
his ode to Duty, which recognise all freedom and
all joy as springing from submission to its com-
mands.
His sub-
mission to
And of Marcus Aurelius it is as true as of
divine rule. Epictetus, that he did not depend upon himself
for protection against the slavery of which he was
conscious, or for attainment of the freedom of
which he was conscious. He spoke as Epictetus
had spoken, of a God near him, a God within him,
who was watching over him, and to whom he
must have recourse if he wished to live a true
life. He might sometimes call the true life, a
life according to Nature, as Butler does, but it
was this Lord and teacher of himself, not some
external power in which he trusted to make such
a life possible for him. Marcus, however, it must
be remembered, was not merely the ruler of him-
man faith self. He was the ruler of a people in whom faith
nishing. and reverence were fast disappearing, on whom
The Ro-
in it va-
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
135
of any who
the traditions of their land were losing their hold, LEOT. VI.
whom he saw no way of imbuing with his higher His dread
convictions. What should he do to keep the might en-
people straight, to prevent them from sinking further.
lower? How could he sustain that which was
perishing in them? Must he not use the powers
which had been committed to him to punish any
who led them to distrust their traditions? These
reflections led Marcus to acts of which I may
speak presently, acts in which he has had many
imitators among those who have not generally
taken him as a model.
to unseen
(3) There is another kind of slavery to Slavery
which men are liable, besides that to Pleasure or powers.
to Society, one which may be combined with
either or both of these. They may dread the
caprice and cruelty of unseen powers which de-
mand such sacrifices as those of Iphigenia. The
Conscience of liberty which comes from trust in
a Being who is not capricious and cruel, who is
emphatically a Deliverer, was that which gave all
the emphasis to the 'I ought' and the 'I ought The mar
tyr's de-
not' of the Christian witness under the Roman fiance of
Empire. I ought not to bow before this demon.
'I ought not to sacrifice to the image of the Divus
Imperator'-that was his formula. The formula
became real for him, it issued in martyrdom, when
he could say, 'I do not reject a faith, but an
'unbelief. I do not set up a God for myself. I
cling to the God who is the Deliverer of my
'race.' When the Christian profession was merely
6
them.
136
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
1
die for a
probabi-
lity.
LECT. VI. the assertion of an opinion-formed after weigh-
He did not ing the probabilities for or against it-there was
no strength for any martyrdom. What did igno-
rant men and weak women understand about
probabilities? Wiser men could overthrow any
probabilities with their scorn or their stakes. But
if there had come to the Conscience the certainty
of an actual Deliverer, then the threefold cord of
immediate punishment, of loathing by Society, of
threatened vengeance hereafter, could be rent in
pieces by the feeblest. If you read Opinion for
Conscience, you change the history of that age
and of all subsequent ages.
What Li-
berty of
cannot be.
At this point I may pass without effort, from
Conscience the inverted phrase which I have adopted, to the
old phrase Liberty of Conscience, which I said
I should be most sorry to lose. What I hope you
will have learnt is, that this last phrase cannot
bear some senses which loose thinkers attach to it.
(1) Liberty of Conscience cannot mean liberty
to do what I like. That we have seen, in the
judgment of the wisest men, of those who speak
most from experience, is bondage. It is from my
likings that I must be emancipated if I would
It cannot mean liberty to
think what I choose. Such men as Marcus Aure-
lius discovered the slavery which came from
thinking what they chose, the necessity of bring-
ing their thoughts under government lest they
should become their oppressors. Every teacher of
physical Science, here or elsewhere, repeats the
No right be a freeman.
to do or
think as
we like.
(2)
}
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
137
own judg-
same lesson. The scientific man bids us seek the LECT. VI.
thing as it is. He tells us that we are always in
danger of putting our thoughts or conceptions of
the thing between us and that which is. He.
gives us a discipline for our thoughts that they
may not pervert the facts which we are examining.
From not heeding this discipline men assumed
that the Sun must travel round the Earth, be-
cause it appeared the most natural thing to
them that it should, the most strange thing that
it should not. When Galileo said to those who Galileo a
protestant
condemned him, 'And yet the earth does move,' against his
he said, 'Neither my thoughts nor the thoughts ment as
'of all the doctors and priests that live now or Pope's.
'ever have lived can the least alter facts. You
'have no right, I have no right, to determine what
'is. All our determinations must fall before the
'truth when that is discovered to us.' (3) So Liberty of
again Liberty of Conscience cannot be a gift which not obtain-
men are to ask of Senates or Sanhedrims or As- in Parlia
semblies of the People. They have it not to be-
stow; if they had, no one could receive it of them.
Those who groan because any of these bodies with-
hold it from them have not yet learnt what it is.
The slave Epictetus would shew them that it could
not be kept by mere external force from any one.
well as the
Conscience
ed by votes
ment.
But when we have got rid of these confused
notions which have fastened themselves to the cry
for Liberty of Conscience, there remains a most What it is.
wholesome and indispensable protest in it to which
no Statesmen or Churchmen or Philosophers can
138
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
of the Con-
amongst
and
men.
LECT. VI. be indifferent, except at their great peril. The
Jealousy opinion has prevailed among all three, that the
science Conscience is a troublesome disturber of the peace,
Statesmen which it may be necessary to endure but which
Church- it would be very desirable to silence. So long
as that doctrine prevails, so long as any fragment
or shred of it remains in our minds, we may talk
about persecution as much as we please; we may
boast of our age for having discovered the inutility
of persecution; but we shall, under one pretext or
other, fall back upon it. The most ingenious
political, ecclesiastical, philosophical excuses will
always be ready to prove that the particular per-
secution we are practising deserves another name
and belongs to a class of acts altogether different
from that which we denounce in other countries,
or in former days. What satisfactory demon-
recognition strations there will be that we are really vindi-
precarious. cating toleration when we are most intolerant,
that we are not interfering with a man's belief,
but only with his desire to crush ours! Therefore
I deem it needful to proclaim that in every in-
stance to which we can point, a Society which
has succeeded in choking or weakening the Con-
science of any of its members has undermined
its own existence, and that the defeat of such
experiments has been the preservation and secu-
rity of the Society that has attempted them.
The banishment of the Moors from Spain helped
to turn a chivalrous and Christian nation into
an ambitious, gold-worshipping, tyrannical nation.
The phi-
losophical
of it very
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
139
Philip II. resolved that the consciences of his LECT. VI.
Protestant subjects in Spain and in
should be crushed. He succeeded in
Holland Punish-
ment of
the first Rulers who
have suc-
coercing
science.
case, and the greatest nation in Europe sunk to ceeded in
a third-rate power.
He was defeated in the the Con-
other, and Holland, from an insignificant pro-
vince, became a people. Louis XIV. was cursed
with success in his dealings with Jansenists and
Protestants during the next century. He en-
feebled and impoverished his land, and prepared
a revolution for his successors. His disciples, the
Stuarts, sought to extinguish the Puritans and
Covenanters in England and Scotland; we owe
any vigour which there is in Great Britain to
their failure. These are the commonplaces of his-
tory. Often as they have been repeated, we have
need to consider them again, and to lay them to
heart; they contain lessons which are never ob-
solete for one set of men or another. Each Sect
and School in the day of its adversity bears a
grand witness on behalf of the Conscience. Each Punish-
Sect and School in the day of its prosperity Sects.
glorifies its own thoughts and opinions, and in-
stead of appealing to the Conscience in each of its
members tries to silence it. They are punished by
an increase of the strifes and divisions which they
hope to extinguish; they lose their convictions
in the vehemence with which they talk of them.
ment of
against
So again in respect to Science. It is no doubt War
true that a man who follows his own notions and Science.
vagaries may be as far from the laws of the uni-
140
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VI. verse as the man who accepts all the traditions of
Why it is other days. But those who, under pretence of hin-
gainst Con- dering notions and vagaries, try in any degree to
a war a-
science.
Mill on
Liberty.
forbid or discourage the exercise of men's thoughts
in reference to these laws, are labouring that they
may be always hidden. The laws may reveal
themselves to any seeker if he be ever so blun-
dering a one. They will not reveal themselves to
any one who is content with his own opinions,
and does not wish to change them for truth. It
is a reasonable assertion that any man who in-
terferes with these investigations, is an enemy of
the Liberty of Conscience. He wishes that men
should affirm something which the Conscience in
them says that they ought not to affirm or to
deny something which the Conscience in them
says they ought not to deny.
A philosophical protest on behalf of Liberty
has appeared in our days from Mr Mill. Some of
you will have read it; those who have must have
appreciated its power and its earnestness. I hold
it to be a valuable testimony against certain opi-
nions which are prevalent among philosophers;
especially among those who worship Society as the
supreme Divinity. It is no less important as a
warning against a tendency which exists among
those who are not philosophers to make uniformity
in practice or in opinion the great object of their
Value of ambition. I do not doubt with Mr Mill that di-
versities, even eccentricities, are much better than
the dead level from which all inequalities are
this Trea-
tise.
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
141
not to be
ed with Ec-
removed, than the desert which some would create LECT. VI.
under pretence of making peace. But I would Liberty
warn you that the Liberty we have been speaking confound-
of to-day, the liberty which Epictetus and Marcus centricity.
Aurelius sought, is far remote from eccentricity
They did not care to be different in their ways
from other men; they would rather be like their
fellows. They refused to be the slaves of the
fashions and habits of their time, or of any time;
but since there must be fashions and habits they
would rather take what they found than change
them for others that in themselves were equally
unimportant. A man may make himself a slave by
adopting the modes of some other time and coun-
try, or by devising new modes of his own, as well
as by copying all that he sees about him. And
so as to acts. The supporters of some faction may
fancy they are asserting their liberty by claiming
their right to bite their thumbs because their op-
ponents defy them to do it. The man who under- Tempta-
stands what Liberty of Conscience is will tell confound
himself that he has no right to bite his thumb,
that he is yielding to one of his own whims and
fancies in such biting; and that whims and fancies
are mischievous tyrants. I do not believe that
Mr Mill meant to confound Liberty with the
right to be peculiar. I am sure he has a sense
of its grandeur which would make such a defini-
tion of it quite intolerable to him. But there are
passages in the Essay which are
open to that
interpretation. And since some who do not love
tion to
them.
142
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VI. Liberty may be glad that it should be so repre-
sented, and some may be even ready to accept
this poor and withered shadow of it in place of
the substance, I have desired that the slander
should not even seem to have the countenance of
so high an authority.
Marcus
Aurelius
of the
Liberty
of Con-
science.
Mill on
Liberty,
p. 50.
I had another reason for referring to this re-
an invader markable Essay. In the course of it Mr Mill
alludes to the Emperor Marcus, and confirms, in
much better language, the opinion which I have
expressed about him. But he fills up a blank
which I had left. "Marcus Aurelius, the gen-
"tlest and most amiable of philosophers and
"rulers, under a solemn sense of duty, authorised
"the persecution of Christians. To my mind,"
adds Mr Mill, "this is one of the most tragical
"facts in all history. It is a bitter thought how
"different the Christianity of the world might
"have been if it had been adopted as the religion
"of the Empire, under the auspices of Marcus
"Aurelius, instead of that of Constantine." To
the lamentation and the wish contained in these
last sentences I do not in the least subscribe. I
have been believe that Christianity would not have been the
least better for being taken under the patron-
age of this good Prince. I believe it proved its
vital strength much more by evoking his hosti-
lity. I do not imagine that its professors would
have been free from any of the sins into which
they fell, or would have been more faithful to
their principles, if they had passed through the
Would
Christians
better for
his patron-
age?
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
143
tives for
tion
trial of alliance with a doomed Empire-a far LECT. VI.
greater trial than any persecution-in his days
rather than in the days of Constantine. But the
other part of the paragraph belongs to facts and
not to speculation. There is no doubt that the His mo-
gentlest of philosophers and rulers authorised the persecu-
persecution of Christians, and authorised it from
a solemn sense of duty. He believed that he was
doing his duty as a ruler by keeping alive the
reverence of his subjects. He believed he was
doing his duty as a philosopher by putting down
men who, as he thought, mimicked the endurance
of pain which belonged to philosophy without en-
tering into its principles. And when Mr Mill goes far better
on to press the moral upon Christians that they which we
cannot be sure they are doing right in perse-
cuting any form of infidelity, if they hold Marcus
to have been utterly wrong in persecuting that
which he deemed infidelity, I should only com-
plain of the charge for its inadequacy and feeble-
ness. I am not the judge either of him or of the
Christians who have followed in his steps. But
there were excuses for him which it would be
impossible to plead for them. If we believe that
the Redeemer of the Conscience has come, what
is any attempt to corrupt it or stifle it but an act
of direct treason against Him?
than any
can allege.
>
LECTURE VII.
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
LECT. VII. I HAVE spoken to you about the Liberty of Con-
The claim science. Butler appears to demand for it much
of Butler
for the
Con-
science.
Second
Sermon
Nature.
more than Liberty. He claims for it Supremacy.
6
The phrase is not used carelessly. It occurs
frequently in the Discourses on Human Nature.
What value the writer of them attached to it you
may guess from these sentences. You cannot
on Human form a notion of the faculty Conscience, without
'taking in judgment, direction, superintendency.
'This is a constituent part of the idea; that is
of the faculty itself; and to preside and govern
'from the very economy and constitution of man
'belongs to it. Had it strength as it has right;
'had it power as it has manifest authority, it
'would absolutely govern the world.'
This strong language proceeds from a man
who had an instinctive dislike of rhetorical ex-
aggerations; who was cautious, even to excess.
If he had found any more moderate words which
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
145
well's de-
would have expressed his meaning, we may be LECT. VII.
sure he would have preferred them. Neverthe- Dr Whe-
less Dr Whewell, when he was sending forth the murrer.
Discourses as a text-book for our use, showed
an impatience of this language. He quoted other
passages from Butler, which might be taken as
modifying it; according to him we have no need
to construe it literally.
would not
mitted it.
It may be true that Butler did not frequently Butler
speak of the Conscience as having a 'right to have ad-
govern the world.' He could scarcely sustain his
speech on such a level; his voice must often have
fallen into a lower key. But I cannot believe
that he would ever have consented to soften
words which were uttered with such solemnity
and deliberation; what he said was implied in
the very idea of the Conscience, he must have
ascribed to it habitually; otherwise he would have
retracted not a few sentences, but his whole trea-
tise.
So far as Dr Whewell attempted to empty
Butler's doctrine of its force, I think he failed:
but he may help us to perceive wherein it is
weak; what there is in it which is inconsistent
with the idea of the Conscience; what there is in Can we?
it which prevents us from recognising the highest
function of the Conscience. The education of
Dr Whewell was altogether different from that
of Butler; it may have enabled him to recognise
some of our necessities to which his predecessor
was less alive.
10
146
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VII.
The
Any one who reads Dr Whewell's Moral
Treatises will be aware of the importance which
for Laws he attached to Laws; to laws in their simplest
searcher
in Nature
Laws
men.
recognises sense as enforced by particular nations on their
among own subjects. Bringing to the study of the 'mi-
crocosm, the little world of man,' the habits which
he had acquired while studying the macrocosm,
the great world of Nature,' he must have sought
for all signs and vestiges of an order in human
existence. He might have imagined a possible
savage, or tried to discover the condition of an
actual savage. But the facts which lay before
him-those which directly concerned his own life
and the life of his neighbours-surely deserved
his first attention. Amongst these none was more
obvious, none was more wonderful than this, that
men obey laws, laws which they did not create,
laws which they speak of as having come down
to them from ancestors, laws which they associate
with the existence of the body whereof they are
Are Laws members. With these Laws, Dr Whewell per-
the ground
of Right ceived that the words Right and Wrong become
Wrong? inseparably blended; they assume to be the pre-
and
servers of Right, the protectors against Wrong.
So earnestly did he dwell upon this observation,
that he was accused of making Morality dependent
upon Laws though they are subject to continual
changes. He repelled the charge indignantly.
The laws, he said, pointed to a Right which they
did not make, to a Wrong which it was not in
their power to put down. It was the business
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
147
nesses of
While Or the wit-
laws Right and
Wrong?
of the Moralist to search for the radical meaning LECT. VII.
of the distinction which they indicated.
some discovered in the varieties of local
an evidence that there is no fixed standard of
Right and Wrong, Dr Whewell looked upon their
varieties and imperfections as witnesses that there
must be such a standard.
well's sym-
Butler.
Butler had always been occupied with the
microcosm. He only contemplated the macro-
cosm in reference to that. The arrangements of
the outward world were profoundly interesting to
him, but interesting as instruments for the disci-
pline and education of men. That he should have Dr Whe-
recognised an Order in this sphere as real as that pathy with
which men of Science had perceived in the other,
was a bond between him and Dr Whewell. But-
ler could be hailed as a witness for fixed Laws.
But when he began to talk of a tribunal within a
man which might, so he seemed to affirm,-re-
verse any decrees that had not issued from it, we
cannot wonder that his admirer should have felt
considerable alarm. Could the Conscience claim Revulsion
an authority above and against laws? Would not
such a pretension, besides interfering with their
dominion, interfere with the fixed standard of
Right which was implied in them? Might not
the Conscience boast that it was itself the creator
of the Right?
These were not fantastic dangers; language
had been used, acts had been done, which evidently
assumed for the Conscience a supremacy as com-
from him.
10-2
148
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VII. plete, as irresponsible as this. I apprehend Dr.
Whewell did good service in warning us of the
this Lec-
ture.
peril; I am not equally sure that he discovered
Object of the way of avoiding it. That way I would now
endeavour to seek, not trusting at all to my own
wisdom, but profiting as much as possible by the
lights which both these teachers afford for our
guidance.
of Supre-
macy.
You may remember that in my last Lecture I
proposed a change in a customary form of speech.
For 'Liberty of Conscience,' I read Conscience of
Liberty.' I explained my reasons for the inver-
sion. I did not wish to deprive the phrase of its
old force, but rather to recover that force by strip-
ping it of some confused notions which had
Conscience attached themselves to it. Above all, I wished
to give the word Conscience its original import,
to restore that link between it and Consciousness,
which is almost inevitably severed when it is
treated as a faculty of Human Nature. If I
make the same experiment on the term which
we are now considering, I shall not be doing vio-
lence to one which has acquired a traditional and
popular sacredness; I shall be dealing with the
phrase of a particular writer, whose courage and
independence of thought teach us that we shall
often honour him most when we depart from his
rubric. In this case I am less scrupulous, be-
cause I am convinced that the change of expres-
sion may not only be the means of reconciling him
with the most eminent of his Commentators, but
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
149
such an
of justifying what sounds inflated and outrage- LECT. VII.
ous in his own statement. "The Conscience of Reason for
Supremacy' may seem to be no substitute for expression.
the 'Supremacy of Conscience,' but the very op-
posite of it. Nevertheless it may show us
what 'judgment, direction, superintendency is in-
volved in the very idea of the Conscience,' in
what sense 'it may have a right to govern the
world.'
and Law,
tion to
When I spoke to you of the discipline which Conscience
was suggested by a distinguished writer of our their rela-
day for implanting 'the sentiment of the forbid- each other.
den' in children, that they might as men become
the dutiful servants of a majority, I urged that
such a scheme-if it were successful (and there
were too many instances of its success to warrant
us in speaking lightly of it)—would destroy a Con-
science, supposing it be that which has borne the
name among men hitherto, that which has sus-
tained any great cause or defied any oppression.
I added, that the sentiment of which Mr Bain
speaks, often leads to a transgression of the gene-
ral laws of the land. I instanced the case of
Contracts respecting Property. The Laws enforce
these. It is admitted that they are for the in-
terest of Society. But there are not only temp-
tations in men to break them for the sake of their
own immediate advantage; there is a social opi-
nion,-it may dwell in a union of workmen, of
tradesmen, or of Nobles,—which is more mighty
than any distant terrors, such as the legislation
150
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VII. of the country may have devised to sustain its
own decrees.
Reference
to a former
Lecture.
When Law
begins to
assert
itself.
The instances to which I alluded are noto-
rious; they belong to a high stage of civilization
-to a country where a philosophy like that of
Mr Bain is highly esteemed and reckoned a
faithful summary of admitted popular maxims.
They lead us to ask ourselves these questions.
May not this Conscience, which has been re-
garded with so much suspicion by Lawgivers,
be in truth the great bulwark of Law? Need
its strength be abated that the strength of the
Law may be increased? Will not the strength
of one be greatest when the strength of the
other is greatest? Do not Laws call forth the
Conscience; when it has acquired the utmost su-
periority which can be claimed for it, is there
not the greatest, the only security that Law will
be reverenced?
It is this doctrine which I desire to enforce
upon you. If you fully receive it, you will not wish
to cripple Butler's language by qualifications and
evasions, yet you will pay the fullest and most
grateful respect to the protest of Dr Whewell.
1. I would appeal first to your own experience.
Schoolmasters, says an old poet, deliver us to
Laws. In the nursery we are acquiring among
other sentiments the sentiment of the forbidden,'
either according to Mr Bain's plan, by trembling
at the rod which will descend on us if we do
what we are told not to do, and so contracting a
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
151
family.
dread of the person who wields the rod; or, as LECT. VII.
I have maintained, by discovering that the for-
bidder is wiser than we are and cares to save
us from the injuries that we should do to our-
selves by following our own likings. Of course Not in the
there are irregularities and caprices in all mortal
discipline. The two maxims may be often mixed
together. He who most tries to act on the one
may drop through passion into the other. But
I believe many a man can say, 'Whatever true
sentiment of the forbidden I have, whatever in
me is not crouching but manly and erect, was
nurtured by this fatherly treatment. God be
thanked for that.' Still this was not Law. The
apprehension of that arises when we are intro-
duced into a Society consisting of boys each with
a desire for independence, each with a sense of
bodily energies corresponding to this desire, each
with tendencies which may lead to mere sa-
vagery; yet each capable of understanding that
he has relations to his fellows, each capable of
saying, I ought to do this, I ought not to do
that. To bring forth this conviction in its full Office of
force is the function of the Schoolmaster. Many master.
in our day have clearly understood that it is their
function. The difference between them and some
of their predecessors is, not that they enforce
laws less strictly, not that they tolerate the break-
ing of them under any circumstances, but that
they appeal to something in the boy which recog-
nises the worth of laws; to that in him which con-
the School-
152
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VII. fesses punishment to be directed against acts of
his which are wrong. The Schoolmaster of this
master of owes his nobleness not to his invention of new
The
School-
the last
age
age acted Canons, but to his vindication of those old simple
on the
maxims of maxims which had been exchanged in the practice
modern
wisdom.
ing of
cal Laws.
of the last generation for the more refined prin-
ciples of conduct that Mr Bain has so ably
illustrated and defended.
2.
All School discipline points in the same
direction. We learn the rules of grammar. They
are learnt out of a book. There is a list of ex-
The teach- ceptions to them. But they remind us of laws to
grammati- which speech must conform itself, laws that must
somehow account for the exceptions. They say
to each of us, Thou, if thou speakest, and would-
est make thyself intelligible, must speak according
to a Law. And we are taught this lesson not
that we may be hindered from uttering ourselves
freely, distinctly, each saying what he has to say,
but that we may do this. We are shewn by ex-
ercises in writing how the words must follow each
other to make sense. If we do not care to speak
or write, the laws will never explain themselves
It is always the same. The Law demands
individual energy to fulfil it. The more the indi-
vidual energy is awakened, the more it recognises
its need of a Law.
to us.
3. In general we get this instruction respect-
ing the laws of speech and of writing mainly from
two languages which we do not speak and write
commonly; which we do not use to express our
1
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
153
old lan-
ordinary wants. So we are reminded, first, that LECT. VII.
there is a variety in the laws of speech; that Use of the
Greeks had forms of speech which Latins had not; guages.
that both had forms of speech which we have not;
secondly, that there are Laws of speech to which
Greek, Latin, and English must all conform them-
selves; thirdly, that these laws do not affect the
things which are spoken of, but govern those
who speak. We are recalled, as I said before, all
study of language must recal us, to the I. The
more general the laws are, the more they suggest
the individual.
why civi-
are more
than bar-
4. So we are prepared for the study of the History;
most obvious and striking facts in the history of lized men
the peoples whose languages have occupied us. interesting
Why should you read about Greeks or Romans barians.
more than about any barbarous tribes? Find dis-
tinct men among the barbarous tribes, men who
can express themselves, and they become as inter-
esting to us as any of their conquerors. A Carac-
tacus or a Galgacus is more dear to us than a Sue-
tonius Paullinus, perhaps than an Agricola. But
we must get a Tacitus to tell us of a Caractacus or
a Galgacus. They stand out clear and brilliant
figures before us, because the Roman historian has
recognised them as such. And how does he differ
from the countrymen of Caractacus or Galgacus?
He has learnt the worth of Laws, he belongs to a
law-governed people. The Savages form a horde,
out of which a living form, an actual I, starts
up ever and anon to remind us what the horde
154
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
for national
LECT. VII. consists of, what each element in it ought to be.
Reverence But of nations which recognise Laws, it is the
life implies characteristic that they are composed of I's; that
for Laws. is to say, the Laws have awakened the Conscience,
reverence
and the Conscience being awakened owns the
majesty of Laws. So we are reconciled to the
triumph of Romans over Britons. We do not
give up our reverence for national life; we do
not worship the force of arms. But we perceive
that a true national life could only be called forth,
could only be sustained by Laws; we are sure
that when it has been called forth, the Laws will
be respected more than the force which has been
the instrument of establishing them.
5. Greek History tells you the same lesson,
and also another which much concerns our subject.
Sparta and You find, among the Greek tribes, the greatest
Athens.
esteem for Legislators; all the greatest men they
have dreamt of in the ages which are not his-
torical or known in those that are belong to this
class. That they feel to be one of their dis-
tinctions from the barbarians. Their freedom is
the other. The Savage, they say, is not a free
Law and man, not a citizen. But there is the greatest dif-
ference in the characters of the different States.
The predominant thought in Sparta is subjec-
tion to the Laws. It is the glory of Leonidas,
and those who fall with him, that they die in
obedience to the laws. The predominant thought
in Athens is personal liberty. The Spartan
welcomes that which he finds, that which he has
Freedom.
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
155
inherited, that which is laid down for him.
a
The LECT. VII.
opposed,
perish to-
Athenian always likes to think that he has share They seem
in making the laws which bind him. Each State but they
is in continual danger of perishing, through rigid gether.
formality or through restlessness. But neither
does perish till the reverence for Law is lost, or
almost lost, in a dread of power of some kind or
other; when that becomes supreme, the nation
ceases to exist. Thus we come to understand that
there are distinct laws which influence the conduct
as there are distinct laws which direct the speech
of different races; but that there is a homage to
Law, as such, lying beneath the respect for parti-
cular laws, springing out of that which is in all
That is what I have called the Conscience.
It must have a Law. It recognises the appro-
priateness of different laws in different places; the
Spartan's 'I ought' may not be the Athenian's ‘I
ought.' But there is an 'I ought' for the Spartan
and the Athenian also; if that is not confessed
there will be no subjection to any laws, local or
general—only anarchy, and with anarchy the ex-
tinction of that sense of individual existence which
seems to have produced it.
races.
Jewish
6. Hence we are led to notice a fact which is The
brought out in your home and your school expe- Law.
rience; one which no observer of the modern
world can overlook. Along with those laws of
Lacedæmon, Athens, and Rome, which form so
conspicuous a subject in our classical studies, there
come before us the ten Commandments which were
156
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VII. given to the Jews. These, like the others, belong
to a peculiar nation; they are the groundwork of
Statutes which we believe to have been abrogated
Its power for us. How have these survived? Why do pa-
over the
Western
Nations.
to it from
Philoso-
phers.
rents in the furthest west, in the most cultivated
times, teach them to their children? How have
they established themselves among nations each
having a code of its own? They prohibit acts to
which the inhabitants of those nations were and
are addicted. They were handed down by a peo-
ple whom these nations hated, whom they were
taught by their priests to hate. Their priests would
fain have persuaded them that their own authority
was higher than the authority of these laws, that
Opposition they could set aside some, dispense with others.
Priests and It is clear that no arguments about the authen-
ticity of documents can have had the slightest
weight with the tribes which accepted this Code,
can never have been the least intelligible to them.
How then can we account for their general diffu-
sion, for their general adoption, in spite of the
influence of religious teachers who would have
much preferred to substitute their own numerous
rules, in spite of the contempt of sages, scanda-
lized that an ignorant people in Palestine should
have become lawgivers to the world? I must re-
serve for my lectures on Moral Theology the full
consideration of this problem. I shall say nothing
here about the history of this Code or the sanction
of it. But it belongs to our present subject to
remark that the command, 'Thou shalt not,' would
•
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
157
have been uttered in vain, if there had not been LECT. VII.
called forth an 'I ought not' in the hearer; that
of its
when these two meet together the decrees or in-
dulgences of Sovereigns or of Priests prove feeble
against them. And this too must be noticed, that Secret
the claim of the Conscience to Liberty is recog- triumph.
nised in the very first words of this Code; that
every article of it is associated with deliverance
from bondage. The Conscience of men has, I
believe, testified to this union, has owned that
Slavery is inevitable for me while I am under
the yoke of my own appetites and inclinations,
that the Law which forbids me to serve these,
points to the highest freedom if it cannot confer
the freedom; points to a 'direction, superinten-
dency, judgment,' in which lies the very secret
both of obedience and freedom.
of Law the
of Con-
7. I alluded to this subject before when I The enemy
commented on some remarkable words of Taylor enemy
respecting Charles II. Custos utriusque Tabulæ science.
was the title which he bestowed on that monarch
in addition to his authority over England, France,
and Ireland, and his claim to be defender of the
Faith. I was obliged to observe that he broke
both the Tables of which he was the guardian, and
taught his subjects to do the same. And yet no
one sanctioned so many acts which tended to bind
the Consciences of his subjects. His own indolent
disposition assuredly would not have prompted
such acts; he desired indulgence from others and
would have granted it to others. But indulgence
158
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
dal maxims
ecclesias-
tics.
LECT. VII. and tyranny are linked closely together; reverence
for law is the only protection of reverence for Con-
science. Charles could not reverence the last in
himself or in his subjects because he did not reve-
The suici- rence the first. I do not say the same of those
of English ecclesiastics who urged him to enforce restraints
upon the Puritans of England or the Covenanters
of Scotland. They had a confused notion that
they paid honour to their fixedness and uniformity
of Laws by not suffering diversities of Opinion.
Their mistake was that terrible one of which I spoke
in
my
last Lecture, the identification of Conscience
with Opinion. But this mistake was as fatal to
the claims of Law upon obedience as it was to the
dignity of the Conscience itself. If the Conscience
is
one with Opinion, the moment our opinion runs
contrary to any law, the moment we think it
may be advantageously altered-we shall set it
Conscience at nought. Whereas the Conscience having a
of Law profound reverence for Law as Law, turning
against
Opinion. to it
to it for a protection against mere opinion,
will rather incur any punishment than trifle with
its authority. Law carries with it for the Con-
science a witness of divinity even when those
who administer it have become devilish. Those
lawgivers therefore who would weaken the Con-
science cut away from under them the ground
on which security for Law must rest, just as
the ecclesiastics who would crush it deliberately
destroy the greatest witness for the direction,
superintendency, judgment of a Righteous God.
the defence
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
159
LECT. VII.
true Pro-
against the
of Con-
I accept the testimony of Butler to the supremacy
of the Conscience, notwithstanding what I take to Butler a
be the imperfection of his language, as a grand testant
recantation and repudiation, from an illustrious oppressors
divine of the English Church who was hereafter science.
to be one of its Bishops, of all those apologies for
restraints upon the Conscience which members of
his Communion had put forward in former days;
a protest against all similar apologies which should
be devised in the times to come. His language
about the Conscience is as different from Taylor's
as can be. One would fence it with rules; the
other appears to assert for it a strange indepen-
dence of rules. But Taylor had partially antici-
pated Butler's claim in his Liberty of Prophesying, The Liber-
had even drawn conclusions from it to which ty of Pro-
phesying.
Butler might have demurred. And they like
Butler and Dr Whewell need not be at issue if we
exchange Rules for Laws, and if we suppose the
Conscience of Laws to involve the Conscience of
Supremacy in an essentially righteous Lawgiver.
Do not suppose that by the Conscience of such
a supremacy I mean the general recognition of a
Supreme Power existing somewhere to whom the
world is subject, and therefore to whom I as one
of its inhabitants am subject. The Conscience has The Con-
nothing to do with such vague and distant pro- speaks of
positions. It is emphatically the witness of a
supremacy over me directly, not over me as one of
the atoms of which the world is composed. I do
not proceed from the world to myself; but from
science
my Ruler.
160
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
The Con-
science
speaks of
subjection
to Right
never to
mere
Power.
LECT. VII. myself to the world; I know of its governor only
so far as I know of mine. Nor do I begin from
the acknowledgment of a Power who as a Power
governs me. In Butler's bold language I own only
one who has a Right to govern. The Conscience
takes no account of Power except as it is joined to
Right, except as it has its ground in Right. The
very business and function of the Conscience is to
disclaim and repudiate any other, to say that it
will serve no other. Here is the vindication of
Dr Whewell's demand for a fixed unchangeable
standard of Right. He does not approach nearer
to it by supposing that the Right exists somewhere
else, and that the Conscience has a certain quali-
fied or subordinate authority in affirming what it
is. Then we may ask, as Mr Bain asks, What
Conscience has this authority, and how much has
it? But if we hold that in every man there is a
Conscience of judgment, direction, superintendency,
and that in every man the Conscience, so far as it
testifies of this, testifies truly-we avoid any such
difficulties; the Conscience in itself has no autho-
rity; its authority begins when it goes out of it-
self, its supremacy consists in its abdication of
The para
dox of
the Con-
science.
supremacy.
9.
That you
will say is a paradox. I told
you that when we begin to speak of the Con-
science, we find ourselves amidst paradoxes; it is
impossible to escape them except by denying the
very existence of that which we are investigating.
It was Butler's reluctance to face this paradox
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
161
science as
sion.
which brought him into collision with his com- LECT. VII.
mentators and I think into contradiction with The peril
of regard-
himself. If the Conscience is a property of mine, ing Con-
and if it implies judgment, superintendence, direc- my posses-
tion, I must be my own judge, superintendent,
director. Then jura nego mihi nata. They are
created by me, not for me. But if there is
that in me which is higher than anything I call
my own; if there is that in me which carries
me beyond myself-if the Conscience is this,—
then I may indeed speak loftily of it; for it tes-
tifies of every man in whom it dwells, that
Igneus est illi vigor et cœlestis origo.
He may have a clothing of earth, he may have
wrapped himself closely in it. But there is in
him a fire which the earth did not kindle, there
are the signs of a parentage which must be
divine.
Its true
glory.
lity and de-
IO. And yet it is here that one finds a jus-
tification for the very hardest epithets that have
ever been bestowed on the Conscience. Butler, Its liabi-
as I hinted before, appears not to recognise the basement.
truth of these epithets; he would scarcely have
liked to speak of a corrupt or evil Conscience.
But no theory of his or of any man can undo
the facts to which these adjectives point; the
truth which any theory contains will be disbe-
lieved and will be inoperative, if justice is not
done to them. Once admit that the Conscience
is that in a man which points to what is above
11
162
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. VII. him, which declares the supremacy of a right that
he did not mould and cannot alter, and the mean-
ing of these expressions becomes frightfully evi-
dent. Disavowing this supremacy, I become what
is so pathetically expressed in a line of Byron's
Lara:
Lord of myself, that heritage of woe.
Heights The more there is of Conscience in me-the more
and
Depths. I confess a higher law-the greater will be my
degradation and the sense of it. And as the
depth of this degradation is measured by the ele-
vation of which I have the Conscience, so all those
pettier and more ignominious forms of self-con-
sciousness to which I adverted in my first lecture,-
all the tricks of vanity which may make us laugh
or weep when we recollect them in ourselves or
others,—are accounted for in the same way. This
self-consciousness attests the grandeur of which
the man is capable, it shews that he cannot be
satisfied with looking at mere things which are
Self Con outside of him. But it verifies the two assertions
of the poet, which often sound contradictory, that
the man who is occupied with himself is occupied
with the meanest of all objects in creation and yet
that he is wise
ceit and
Self Re-
spect.
Who still suspects and still reveres himself
In lowliness of heart.
II. I have touched upon the subject of the
Laws of Nations solely as it bears upon the ques-
tion of the Supremacy of the Conscience. Any
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
163
science of
direct treatment of that subject must be reserved LECT. VII.
for my Lectures on Moral and Political Phi-
losophy. But I cannot omit to notice a phrase
which you will often hear from the wisest men
and find in the best books; 'The Conscience of The Con-
a Nation.' Can I accept that form of speech a Nation.
after taking so much pains to connect the Con-
science with each man, with the word I? Most
heartily do I accept it; I should regard the loss
of it as an unspeakable calamity. It reminds us
that the Nation is composed of I's; that there-
in consists its preciousness; that a Society such
as Mr Bentham describes, which is a fictitious Does it in-
body composed of the individual persons who are with the
considered as constituting, as it were, its members,' Con-
is not a Nation at all. Men are not wont to live science?
and die for an 'as it were.' The Nation for which
men are content to live and die must have a
Conscience; a Conscience to which each of its
citizens feels that an appeal can be made, a Con-
science which makes it capable of evil acts; a
Conscience which gives it a permanence from age
to age.
terfere
individual
false Pro-
Leave fictions to the philosophers who
care for them; let every one of us claim his place
as the citizen of a real Nation, real because it
has a Conscience. And let me conjure every one True and
of
you who
who may hereafter have the opportunity phets.
of speaking to men as a divine, an advocate or
a legislator, every one who possesses any gift or
faculty of addressing multitudes, to beware how
he uses this opportunity and that faculty. It is
11-2
164
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
What each men.
may do.
LECT. VII. no trifle to speak to the Conscience of any body of
men. You may raise it or you may corrupt it.
You may turn your countrymen-any of them,
rich or poor-into a base mob, you may exalt them
into citizens. Think of the great men who have
set the last object before them. The curse of
God is upon those who pursue the other.
fulness of
a Law.
(
12. In this union of the Nation with the Indi-
vidual one of the deep mysteries of the Conscience
The fear is involved. The might of Law is that it speaks.
to a whole body; that it addresses each member
of that body as a Thou. The might of Law and
also the terror of Law is there. Many a man would
be glad to escape from the sentiment of the
forbidden' which it creates, to that sentiment of
the forbidden which is merely a shrinking from
the lash. The Israelites were faithful speci-
mens of our race when they longed to exchange
the dreariness of a wilderness with subjection to
a Law, for the flesh-pots of Egypt with its task-
masters. That change is not possible for any one
who is a citizen or is to become a citizen. He
is brought face to face with a Law; his acts are
tried by a Law; if it condemns any acts in a
The Law neighbour it condemns the same in him. As he
within.
approaches the inner sanctuary in which his
thoughts and purposes dwell, he is startled by
finding that there is a Law over them also; nay,
is it not the highest Law, is it not that which speaks
directly of wrong, which says, Thou art wrong?
Here is the penalty of having a Conscience, of
THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
165
A LECT. VII.
from the
being under a Law, of not being a brute.
penalty which is far more terrible than all which Refuge
the Legislature can inflict for the violation of the sense of
Law; who might not be glad to commute the Con- Animal-
science of wrong and guilt, for the worst of these?
Wrong in
ism.
But the Conscience of Wrong implies a Con-
science of Right. The Law must have come from
one who is Right, from one who must be the ene-
my of Wrong. Is not the enemy of Wrong the
Deliverer from Wrong? The Law looked at as
a mere code of letters, fixed and irrevocable, is a
chain upon a man which he would give worlds
to break but which winds itself ever more closely
about him because he has a Conscience. The Law Refuge
contemplated as expressing the righteous mind of sense of
the Lawgiver, speaks to the Conscience of the the belief
liberty which it craves. It recognises Law and of Right.
Liberty as essentially united. Its freedom con-
sists in its obedience-not to Decrees or Statutes,
not to a Society, but-to a Being who is right
and seeks to make it right.
Thus Right and Wrong become ultimate dis-
tinctions which can be resolved into no others.
There is a deep truth in the claim of Supremacy
for the Conscience. There is a deep truth in the
protest on behalf of Law against any supremacy
man which interferes with its supremacy.
Both together lead us to the question, 'Good or
'Evil, which of them is supreme, which of them is
'at last to govern me and the world?'
from the
Wrong in
LECTURE VIII.
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
LECT.
VIII.
I HAVE given some hints in several of my Lec-
tures, especially in the last, about the influence
which the Education of the Nursery and of the
School may have in crushing or in awakening the
Conscience. Two questions I think must have
occurred to you in reference to this subject. Both
concern you and me greatly. The first is Quis
Teachers? custodit ipsos custodes? Is there any Guide
Who
teaches
for the Parent and the Schoolmaster who may
teach them not to destroy that which it is their
function to cultivate and preserve? Philosophers
it seems may furnish them with ingenious receipts
for stifling the Conscience. Divines and Casuists
have written long tomes which, if we may believe
so fair a witness as Jeremy Taylor, utterly bewilder
it. Supposing these are the ultimate rulers of the
Conscience, what chance is there that it will retain
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
167
LECT.
VIII.
the com-
any freedom, any mastery over the inclinations
which rise up against it? The second question
is this 'Under what guidance do we fall when Who takes
we are loose from the control of parents and mand of us
schoolmasters? Can the discipline of what Mr Bain are left to
calls 'Society' be trusted then? Will that take ourselves?
care of the Conscience with which you have said
it is so often called to do battle?'
when we
choose for
These are questions which men have been com-
pelled to ask themselves in all times.
It appears
to me that those have been the wisest and truest
who have asked them most earnestly, who have
been most resolute not to go without an answer.
I spoke in my first Lecture of Socrates. I regard-
ed him as the philosopher who had least cared
to invent a System in which he could himself
repose, or which he could transmit to disciples;
who had most cared to pursue the enquiry 'What
am I?' who had most stimulated disciples to enter
upon that enquiry. In pursuing our studies re-
specting the Conscience I have been drawn away
from him to teachers of our own country who
have undertaken to illustrate its operations and
its history. I come back to him because I think Recur-
he has something to tell us which they have not Socrates.
told us; nay, which their very eagerness to glorify
the Conscience and assign it independent powers
has prevented them from telling us. To explain
what I mean I must turn from later interpre-
ters of Socrates, whether they have admired or
disparaged him, to the testimonies of those who
rence to
168
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
VIII.
LECT. experienced the effects of his lessons upon them-
selves, who knew best what had inspired his ene-
mies with their dislike to him,
Testimony an excuse for condemning him.
of Xeno-
phon.
the Dæ-
plied in the
lessons of
and given them
Upon these sub-
jects the evidence of Xenophon is most explicit.
He speaks with the affection of a friend, with the
frankness of a soldier.
I shall not require you to dive far into his
Memorabilia, or to accept any opinions of mine
as to the force of his words. Open the first
pages of his book; read them as simply as they
He accepts are written. They refer to the Dæmon who, as
mon as im- Socrates declared, was the Guide of his thoughts
life and and his acts. Xenophon had every temptation to
Socrates. avoid this topic. He might have explained away
the language of his master, as many have done
subsequently. He might have said that it did
not affect his judgment on other questions, that
he was a great practical moralist in spite of what
he dreamed about an invisible director. He takes
no such course. He introduces the Dæmon to us
at once. He does not pretend to account for
any part of the doctrine or life of Socrates without
it. He had heard him continually speak of such a
Guide and Reprover, who checked him when he
was choosing any crooked path, who gave him
hints and intimations of the road which he ought
to choose. Xenophon had never known him tell
a lie. He must have been a confirmed liar if he
uttered these words, so deliberately, so habitual-
ly, without meaning them. His pupil had not
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
169
found him yielding to fancies; Socrates affirmed
that he was hindered from yielding to them by
these admonitions. Xenophon must give up all
faith in him if he counted him a deceiver or a
victim of self-deception in such professions.
LECT.
VIII.
concession
opinion?
fiance of
You will say that Xenophon, as well as Socra- Was that a
tes, accepted the traditional belief of his country- to popular
men, and that this was but an article of their tra-
ditional belief. Look at the passage to which I
am referring before you adopt that interpretation
of it. You will find that the author of the Me-
morabilia treats the acknowledgment of the Dæ-
mon as the main offence which had led to the
charge against Socrates; the charge of outraging
the traditional opinions of his countrymen. He Or a de-
had brought in new Dæmons. Xenophon as- it?
sumes, with obvious reasonableness-even if we
are not bound to admit so well informed a
contemporary, as able to speak positively—that
his accusers meant this Dæmon; and that the
Judges condemned him because his allusions
to one who was always near him were so no-
torious. Undoubtedly there was added to this
count of the indictment the other, that he was
corrupting the minds of the youth. But what was
the corruption except that he tempted them also to
confess this Teacher, and so withdrew them from
the objects of customary Athenian homage? He
might be really more devout than most of the
Athenians in the performance of the ordinary
rites, he might desire a cock to be given to
170
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
VIII.
LEOT. Esculapius on his death-bed; but the instinct of
his judges was assuredly right. The service of
such a guide as he described the Dæmon to be
did interfere most dangerously with the service of
the gods of nature, the gods of power and not of
right, whom the rulers of Athens desired that its
young men should revere.
The
ground of
tence upon
Learned
quibbles;
'Con-
sciousness
science.'
Some have fancied that they should relieve
the sen- Socrates of a stigma, and bring him more into
Socrates. harmony with modern opinions, if they called this
Dæmon the Conscience. I trust you know enough
by this time of the force which I give to the
word Conscience not to suspect me of such an
evasion. If Socrates had been without a Consci-
ence he would never have acknowledged a divine
of a Con- Guide, as if he had been born deaf he would never
have known anything of the sweetest voice; but
he could no more identify the Conscience with the
Guide than he could identify his hearing with the
voice. He was conscious of one superior to him-
self who, he said, was directing him and superin-
tending him; it would be the very outrage upon
his veracity against which Xenophon protested, to
suppose that he only intended to signify that he
had a Conscience. That is a notable instance of
the subterfuges by which the plain words of a
great man are explained away, to the immense
injury, I conceive, of the little men who invent the
explanation.
Plato.
Socrates wrote no books; he lived and dis-
coursed. But the disciple who took him for the
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
171
LECT.
VIII.
The Dæ-
out mon in the
Dialogues.
In
chief speaker in his Dialogues was just as much
obliged as Xenophon to recognise the Dæmon as
his teacher. Plato knew that he must leave
Socrates, if he left out this conviction of his.
it lay a chief part of the influence which the great
questioner had exerted over him and over the
young men of Athens. And Plato could not say
what he had to say except through Socrates.
Putting himself for his master he would have lost
that mighty power which Cicero and Augustine
felt not less than the Greeks who could taste the
honey as it fell from his lips. The life, the hu-
mour, the actual
the actual Plato would have gone, and
nothing would have been left but the dry bones
of a System called Platonism, which no mortal
could believe or care for; which never had any
existence but in the digest of Brucker or Ten-
nemann.
to a great
from the
later
schools.
It is quite true that we hear little of the Dæ- Banished
mon when we leave the contemporaries of Socra- extent
tes, those who put him to death, and those who
embalmed his memory. Aristotle talked much of
the Soul, but he supposed that he might leave the
enquiry 'What am I?' as one that did not require
further elucidation; his vocation was to arrange
studies in their relation to each other, not to pur-
sue this study as the central one of all. The need
therefore of such a Guide may not have come
very distinctly before him. Yet Aristotle, with Aristotle.
all his love of System, was an essentially practical
man; one who preserved a healthy acquaintance
172
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT.
VIII.
with the living creatures that walk the Earth,
with their doings and with their needs. He must
therefore have reverenced Socrates; we know that
he did. He must have learned much from him.
Whether he could understand what was said about
the Dæmon or not, he will have respected it.
Ridiculous Those who framed schemes of the Universe, in-
makers of troducing into them in place of men what could
to all
Systems.
be managed much more conveniently, abstract no-
tions-those who, if the facts did not fit conve-
niently into their systems, said bravely with the
Abbe Raynal, 'So much the worse for them'—
these have always despised Socrates as one who
never could manipulate notions, and was a reck-
less disturber of Systems.
There is a man among the Greek Stoics whose
name is chiefly familiar to us by those lines in
Horace wherein he says that Homer
quid sit pulchrum quid turpe quid utile quid non
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.
Chrysippus Chrysippus was one of those grand System build-
anthes. ers whom his contemporaries regarded with the
and Cle-
profoundest admiration. They contrasted him
with another of the same school, whom they
described as a very lout in philosophy, an ass
under panniers. His name was Cleanthes. But
this despised man, instead of being commemorated
in two lines, has left behind him a hymn to
Jupiter. He had discovered that he needed
something else than a System of which he could
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
173
6
VIII.
boast that it had a place for everything, and that LECT.
everything was in its place; that he needed one
who actually knew him, and could direct him. I
can never read this hymn without wonder and
shame, especially these concluding lines of it.
who makes
fit and the
prays for
'But, O Jove, giver of all gifts, dark in thy The man
'clouds, ruler of the Lightning, Be pleased to all things
'deliver men from miserable ignorance. Scatter man who
'that, O Father, from the soul, grant us to inhe- light.
'rit that understanding in the confidence whereof
'thou with right dost govern all things. So being
'honoured ourselves, we shall return honour to
'thee, Praising thy works continually as it be-
comes a mortal; seeing that there is no greater
'reward to mortals or to God than ever righteously
'to celebrate that Law which is common to both,'
Think of the poor ass between panniers, finding
out that his great necessity was to be delivered
from his ignorance, to dwell in light instead of
darkness; and that there was somewhere, whether
he could name his name or not, one who could
hear his cry for deliverance and for light; one
whom it was the blessing of all creatures to praise
and magnify, because Right dwelt in Him, be-
cause He ruled by right!
As we come down lower in the history, and The Slave.
encounter those grand figures of the Slave and
the Emperor, concerning whom I spoke to you
two weeks ago, we become more and more aware
of the difference between the man who puts toge-
ther a set of opinions which satisfies him, and
174
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT.
VIII.
for life
above his
school.
which is to satisfy his disciples, and the man
who is seeking a living guide for himself and so
is able to point out one to them. I have told
you already how impossible Epictetus found it to
obtain the freedom which he deemed the great
necessity for man, unless he could look up to a
God, not at a distance from him, but a judge and
superintendent of him, of his thoughts as well as
The battle his acts. You will scarcely realize the truth of
raises him this remark if you merely turn to the Enchiridion,
where his doctrines are digested into short sayings,
and look as if they were delivered ex cathedrâ.
In the conversations which are reported by Ar-
rian you see more into the actual struggle of the
man for life, his struggle even with the opinions
of the school to which he belonged when they
interfered with practice. For instance. The Stoics,
as you may learn from Cicero, were champions
of Divination. They had their own way of ex-
plaining it. They could compel the superstitions of
their people to accord with their philosophy. But
What he they were superstitious nevertheless. Hear how
Divina- Epictetus speaks on this subject. I will take
Mrs Carter's version, which was made in the
last century, and is apt to weaken rather than
strengthen the force of the author's words on
subjects of this kind. "From an unreasonable
"regard to Divination we omit many duties. For
"what can the Diviner see besides Death or
Dangers or Sickness or such things? When it
"is necessary then to expose one's self to danger
thought of
tion.
66
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
175
LECT.
"for a Friend, or a duty to die for him, what VIII.
"occasion have I for Divination? Have I not
(6
The Divi-
ner who
guesses
Diviner
knows.
a Diviner within who has told me the essence
"of Good and Evil, and who explains to me the and the
indications of both? What further need have who
“I of the entrails of Victims or the flight of
Birds? Can I bear with the other diviner when
"he says, "This is for your interest?' For doth
"he know what is for my interest? Doth he
"know what good is? Hath he learned the in-
"dications of good and evil as he hath those of
"the Victims? If so, he knows the indications
"likewise of fair and base, Just and Unjust. Do
"you tell me, Sir, what is indicated to me, Life
"or Death, Riches or Poverty? But whether
"those things are for my interest or not I shall
"not enquire of you * *
* What is it
"that leads so often to Divination? Cowardice;
"the dread of Events. Hence we flatter the
"Diviner, Pray, Sir, shall I inherit my father's
"estate?' 'Let us see, let us sacrifice upon the
"occasion.' 'Nay, Sir, just as fortune pleases.'
"Then if he says, 'You shall inherit it,' we give
"him thanks as if we received the inheritance
"from him. The Consequence of this is that
(6
66
6
*
they play upon us. What then is to be done?
to be de-
"We should come without previous desire or The wish
aversion; as a Traveller enquires the road of a ceived.
"Person whom he meets, without any desire for
"that which turns to the right hand more than to
"the left; for he wishes for neither of them; but
176
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT.
VIII.
Should we
pray for
good luck
"that only which leads him properly. Thus we
"should come to God as a Guide. Just as we
"make use of other guides; not persuading them
or for guid. "to show us one object rather than another, but
"receiving such as they present to us.
But now
"we hold the bird with fear and trembling, and
"in our invocation to God entreat him-'Have
ance into
Truth?
66
((
mercy upon us; suffer me to come off safe.' You
wretch, would you have anything then but what
"is best? And what is best but what pleases
"God? Why do you, as far as in you lies, corrupt
your Judge and seduce your Adviser?"
((
We may take this memorable passage as ex-
plaining the meaning of all the discourses of
Epictetus, and the relation between his discourses
and his life. It has an historical value which is
Passage greater than its biographical. It illustrates the
new world. passage from the old world into the new; it ex-
into the
peror con-
versing
with him-
self.
plains the demands of men which some Revelation
of God must answer. If there was such a Divi-
ner over men, as Epictetus affirmed there was,
could He not show in some way to other men
besides Epictetus what He was and how they
might find Him?
The evidence in the
is no less remarkable.
case of Marcus Aurelius
His books are addressed
The Em to himself. It is with himself he carries on his
Dialogues; it is himself that he warns of con-
tinual temptations to laziness, indulgence, cow-
ardice; it is himself that he stimulates to energy
and manliness. He recalls himself from specu-
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
177
VIII.
mon of
Aurelius.
lations about the thoughts, schemes, devices of LECT
other men to take cognisance of that which is pass-
ing within him. He refers continually to a govern- The Da-
ing part in his soul, to a God or a Dæmon close Marcus
to him who is able to preserve him from the influ-
ences of external things and the phantasies of his
own mind. I grant you that you will often have
to question yourselves whether this ruling part
of the soul was to keep Marcus from falling into
what was corrupt and base, or whether he was to
keep it. Do not avoid that doubt; do not try to
settle it by any peremptory decision. The diffi-
culty was in the writer of the Meditations; the
difficulty is in you. To face it is the way to be
delivered from it. You will find also much in Does he
Marcus Aurelius about the 'whole' of which we is he ruled
rule it, or
by it?
form a portion; many lessons drawn from the rela-
tions which the parts bear to the 'whole.' All such
passages throw light upon his character and upon
his efforts to act as the Ruler of a mighty Empire
ought to act. He felt the danger of forgetting
his people, whilst he was thinking of himself, as
well as the danger of losing himself in the mul-
titude of things and men that were continually
passing before him. The struggle to reconcile The man
these two claims was one of the great struggles Statesman.
of his life; is it not in our little sphere your
struggle and mine? The perplexities of this kind
which an honest and serious man discovers to us,
are worth far more than the most elaborate devices
for concealing them, or for adjusting them. But
and the
12
178
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
VIII.
LECT beware of listening to any commentators or trans-
lators who try to account for them by certain
tenets of the Stoics which Marcus Aurelius had
embraced. You cannot read him and believe that.
His tenets were webs which had spun themselves
more or less closely about him. They gave him
hints of certain principles which he needed for
action; before he could act he had to break
through them. Thus, for instance, the 27th
Aphorism of his 5th Book is to this effect. "To
"live with the Gods is our calling. He lives
"with the Gods who continually exhibits to them
"his own soul, pleased with the things which are
appointed for him, ready to do whatsoever that
"Dæmon desires whom Jupiter hath given to
"each as a guide and governor over him; which
"Dæmon is indeed an offshoot from Him.
Living
with the
Gods.
66
And
Not dwell- "this is the Mind or Reason of each man." It
ing among
particles of may be―as a learned Scotchman informs me who
Ether.
published a translation of the Meditations some
100 years ago, which Mr Long's must have made
obsolete, if it ever had any circulation-that the
Stoics conceived the divine substance to be an
infinitely diffused and all-pervading Ether, and
that souls were particles of this Ether, and so on.
Well! I dare to say they may have had that con-
ception and many others equally sagacious. But
Marcus Aurelius was not talking about Ether; he
was enquiring after a Ruler for himself. And the
slightest glimpses of light which he gained about
that question are worth something in this day to
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
179
us, to whom his theories about Ether are worth
nothing.
LECT.
VIII.
on the
Dæmon,
These distinguished men, Cleanthes, Epictetus, Plutarch
Marcus Aurelius, do not speak to us of the So- Socratic
cratic Dæmon; each speaks of a Guide or Teacher
of whom he had need for himself. There was an
earlier Philosopher (in the reign of Trajan) whose
vocation was especially to revive the images of
the past; who has revived them for English men
and English children, as well as for the Greeks
and Romans among whom he dwelt and whose
ancestors he compared. Plutarch of Charonæa
was a faithful student of the lives and acts of
Philosophers, as well as of the lives and acts of
Statesmen. He has a curious and characteristic
dialogue on the subject of the Dæmon. I have not
leisure to give you a full account of it. But I
must allude to a passage which evidently expresses
the judgment of the writer. Various explanations
of the Dæmon have been given, some resolving
it, as a modern sage might, into one of the forms
of ancient superstition, some accounting for it in a
purely material way, some by sheer self-deception.
Then it occurs to one of the speakers as rather Possibly
strange that birds, dogs, serpents should be counted
more sacred to the Gods and
press their minds, than men.
that as one who is fond of horses does not devote
himself to the whole class but picks out some one
of special promise and beauty, and devotes all
his diligence to the training of that, so it may
the divini-
ty cares for
men as
much as
more able to ex-
And he suggests animals.
And he
for lower
12-2
180
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT.
VIII.
Selection
of inen.
be that the Gods select a man like Socrates and
educate him for higher apprehensions and greater
work than the rest of his kind, and that as some
horses need continual curbs or whips, while others.
are attentive to the least sound of the master's
voice and obey that, so it may have been with the
human disciple; that the divine voice speaking
in his mind may have been more effectual in de-
terring him from wrong and guiding him to right
than any force from without could have been.
I was anxious to quote these words of Plutarch
because they bear directly upon the Education
of the Conscience—the subject of which I under-
took to speak this morning-and because they
raise a most important doubt. Plutarch seems
to treat it as a singular felicity or privilege of
Socrates due to his difference from other men, to
some rare natural gifts, that he had these internal
monitions. The suggestion sounds most plausible;
I know not how any thinkers of the old world
could have thoroughly rejected it. And yet if it
were so, whence came the influence of Socrates over
his contemporaries, his influence over subsequent
generations? If he could not say to all who heard
him, 'My guide is also your guide, you can hear his
' voice as I do,' what right had he to converse with
men only them, what understanding could there be between
or of every them? In that case his declaration that he only
Is the
Dæmon
the guide
of some
man?
drew forth from his disciples what was in them,
had no meaning or truth; he carried that in him
with which they had nothing to do.
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
181
VIII.
The seeker
and the
of Wis-
·
The name Philosopher was to one who used LEOT.
it faithfully, a renunciation of this boast. The
Wisdom was sought, pursued, longed for. It was of Wisdom
always near the seeker, but it never could become possessor
a possession or property which he could hold dom.
against adverse claimants. He who tried to do that
was a Sophist. That word, as Mr Grote the his-
torian has shown, did not necessarily involve the
notion of trickery or imposture. It did involve
the assumption that the man held Wisdom in fee
simple; that he had it to give or to sell in different
portions to those who came asking for it. Socrates
might think rightly or wrongly that such a pro-
fession led in a majority of cases to quackery in
the vendor of the article, to much delusion and
disappointment in the purchaser of the article.
But apart from all such suspicions, it was the
profession itself that he contended against; the
lesson he taught was that the youth who wanted
wisdom could not beg it, steal it, or buy it of any
second-hand retailer; that there was an inexhaust-
ible well of it, and that to this he must find his
way and drink for himself. Hard though it
be not to contemplate Socrates as above his
temporaries because he was a Philosopher,
name itself and all that he said was indicated by of a man.
it must perish if we give him that credit.
may Socrates
con- Philoso-
the
being a
pher as-
sumes to
the dignity
of Alexan-
Before the days of Epictetus, Plutarch and The Jew
Marcus Aurelius, there had appeared in Alex- dria.
andria a Jew who had earnestly meditated on
this puzzle and who thought he saw the solution
182
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
His
LECT.
VIII.
strength
and his
weakness.
of it. He had been formed by the study of the
Law and the Prophets of his own race. He had
mixed with the Greeks who brought to the city
of the Ptolemies different philosophical wares.
Philo was a man of much subtlety, given to
indulge his fancy in conceits and allegories,—
which was the Jewish disease in his day and
many other days,—with some vanity, but on the
whole with an earnest purpose, a real desire for
Truth. He found that in his Scriptures Wisdom
was represented as coming to men-to simple men
—as illuminating them concerning their own con-
dition and the condition of their land; as teaching
them of the past, and the present, and the future.
Here it seemed to him was that which answered
to the philosophy or search for Wisdom among
the Heathens. Must not the same Wisdom who
awakened the beliefs and hopes of those who
had been honoured as prophets in his land have
also been the source of all the strivings and
aspirations of other men? These thoughts of his
were mixed, as I said, with many conceits and
with a strange self-exaltation (alternating with
real humility), both on the ground of his Jewish
descent, and of those sympathies with Gentile
learning which Jews dreaded. Evidently some-
thing was wanting in his interpretation of the
Sphynx riddle, if it was the human riddle; he
had not seen how common life, and the wants
of common men, could be connected with that
lore which the great men had spoken of and had
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
183
wished to impart. But he had given a hint which
could not be forgotten. It made a deep impres-
sion upon certain men in the next generation who
had accepted a belief which he, if he heard of it,
had rejected.
LECT.
VIII.
tians of
dria.
principle.
These were the teachers in the Christian School The Chris-
of Alexandria, men who had exposed themselves Alexan-
more than the members of almost any Church
to the contempt and indignation of Jews and
of philosophers, of proconsuls and Emperors by
receiving the message that a crucified man was
the Lord of the World-and who more than thẹ
members of almost any Church had laboured to
diffuse that message. That which was peculiar in Their
their teaching arose from the exceeding strength
of their conviction that He whom they reverenced
was that Wisdom or Word who had been in all
ages imparting light to the consciences of men,
and who had been manifested in the latter
days as the Guide of human beings. This idea
is especially developed in the Пlaidaywyos of
Clemens. He had already addressed the Gentiles
in what he called a Λόγος προτρέπτικος, an argu-
ment designed to shew them how all their super-
stitions had been withdrawing them from an
unseen and divine Teacher, and how many testi-
monies there were in their Poets, their Philoso-
phers, in their very legends, to the existence of
such a Teacher. In the more expanded work
which I have mentioned he traced the course of
discipline by which this Teacher (to whom he applies
184
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
:
LECT.
VIII.
that name which Plutarch opposed to the lover
of birds, the lover of men) withdrew them from
the service of pleasure, and of the lower appetites,
to the consciousness of Him and submission to
His guidance. The habit which Philo had culti-
vated in his readers, and which was promoted
by the circumstances of men without homely or
national experiences—the habit of fantastic alle-
The Pæda- gorizing—had descended upon Clemens. His
Clemens. indulgence in it makes the practical tendency of
his treatises, as a whole, more conspicuous, though
it has deservedly weakened his influence in later
times. From want of confidence in his own lead-
ing principle, he was often tempted to imagine
a communion between the sages of the other na-
ish tradi- tions and the Jewish prophets for which there
desertion is no historical justification. Later criticism by
of his prin- confuting these hypotheses has added force to
gogue of
His at-
tempt to
connect
Heathen
wisdom
with Jew-
tions a
ciple.
the truth which they overshadowed. There are
in Clemens many indications how the Asceticism
which, as I said in a former lecture, every philoso-
pher of every school, nay, every man with work
to do, has found needful, may pass into the frivo-
lous Asceticism which is linked to superstition.
These faults, if we observe them in an honest not
a captious spirit, may be as useful to us as those
merits which made Clemens one of the most re-
markable of the early Greek fathers. I notice him
as the first among Christian writers who distinctly
and formally dealt with that question which I
said was forced upon us, Whether there is any one
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
185
VIII.
who is in the highest and truest sense a Teacher LECT.
of men, who therefore suggests what is good,
controls what is mischievous, in the subordinate
Teachers.
trine of the
gogue, why
the later
cause they
the mix-
pro- ture of phi-
only System
losophical
Every step in the after history of the Church The doc-
shewed how great was the temptation of those who Pada-
ruled in it and taught in it to keep that question offensive to
out of sight. While they asserted for themselves Church.
divine powers to superintend and judge the Con-
science, they were continually denying, in practice
if not in words, that there was any one who
superintended and judged them. It was not that
Philosophy was banished from the Church. After
a vigorous effort to proscribe Aristotle the eccle-
siastical doctors submitted to him. His dogmas Not be-
not only mingled with theirs but determined what dreaded
form theirs should take. Philosophy was
foundly honoured as a System of Wisdom,
it ceased to be a search after Wisdom. There- lation.
fore the belief of a Wisdom which was searching
for men and educating them was inevitably ob-
scured though it could not be banished. Ever Boethius
and anon some of the greatest Systematisers, like Thomas à
that Boethius of whom I spoke in my inaugural
Lecture, in hours of sorrow and persecution dis-
covered their need of an actual Teacher and Con-
soler; and their words, spoken in the solitude
of some prison, were accepted by rulers and states-
men as giving them what no systems could give.
An unknown monk, whose very name is disputed,
though he is called Thomas à Kempis, writing in
with reve-
and
Kempis.
186
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT.
VIII.
uncouth Latin and expressing more than an indif-
ference to the scholasticism of his time, has had
an influence deeper and more widely spread than
that of the most learned men, only because he
spoke of an unseen Teacher who conversed with the
Consciences of men and to whom they might turn
in their troubles and their ignorance.
The lessons of this monk did not cease to be
recognised when another monk of firmer and
clearer purpose spoke to the Consciences of his
contemporaries of one who could deliver them
from their own evils as well as from the burthens
which doctors and Systematisers had laid upon
Luther. them. The Reformation which Luther inaugu-
rated was an emphatic declaration that there is a
Conscience in a man which must have a personal
helper and deliverer. But Luther found this as-
sertion made so strongly in the Bible, so much
denied elsewhere, that he dwelt upon its claims
to man's faith and trust till his followers began to
exalt it into the place of the living Guide for
whose sake the Reformer loved it.
Butler.
I am approaching topics which belong more
to the Course on Moral Theology. But I cannot
omit to notice here that the belief of such a
living Teacher as Socrates dreamed of and the
Christian fathers affirmed to exist for all men,
removes that difficulty about direction, superinten-
dence, and supremacy, which we found had led to
a strife between Butler and Dr Whewell. Nei-
ther of them had the least sympathy with the
THE EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
187
LECT.
VIII.
tenets of the Alexandrian teachers, both had a
healthy distaste-derived either from a logical or
mathematical training, still more from the prac-
tical occupations of England-for the fancies in
which they indulged. But they might, I think,
have discovered the best correction of these as
well as a solution of the great problem of the
Conscience which they have set before us in differ-
ent aspects, if they had been less afraid of ventur-
ing on dangerous ground or of incurring unjust sus-
picion. Butler braved that peril when he accepted He ac-
as the text of his Analogy a passage from Origen, Alexan-
the most fantastical of all the Alexandrian school; teacher
Clemens might have helped him quite as usefully Analogy.
in his Sermons on Human Nature.
cepted an
drian
in his
for educa-
day.
Our days are different in many respects from The zeal
Butler's. Amongst us, more than amongst our tion in our
fathers of the last century, the questions are
debated, How are we to educate ourselves, how
are we to educate men and women and children
of different classes, from the highest to the lowest?
Till we determine what we are, what there is in
these men and women and children which can be
educated, till we settle whether we are to be treat-
ed and are to treat others as atoms of a mass,
or whether each of us is a distinct I, and must
be taught to believe that he is so and to act as
if he were, I cannot conceive that we shall make
much advance in the science of Education; though
we may be overwhelmed with statistics that bear
upon it, with new theories and mechanical arrange-
188
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT.
VIII.
How it
drives us
ments which might be profitable, if we knew for
what purposes they were to be used. But if Edu-
cation means not the dwarfing as much as possible
every individual boy and man, but the awakening
him to a consciousness of what he is, to a con-
science of what he ought to do, then we must press
the demands which I made at the beginning of
this Lecture, 'Who directs those who undertake
to the old to educate, who educates us when they leave us
'or their power over us is exhausted?' Those who
try to evade that great controversy really settle it
in their own way, which is, it seems to me, an utterly
mournful way, a way that leads to despair. I can-
not but hold that there is a solution of it which
encourages the best hopes, which justifies the
most steady and vigorous efforts, in the educa-
tion of others and of ourselves.
question.
LECTURE IX.
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST IN THE
MODERN WORLD.
to the first
I HAVE been now lecturing for some weeks on LECT. IX.
Casuistry. I began by saying that I accepted Reference
that old word which Dr Whewell had thrown Lecture.
aside because he believed it not adapted to our
times. I told you that if I agreed with him in
his premises I should at once adopt his conclusion.
It is a duty to the memory of a founder not to
follow the letter of his instructions if by departing
from it we can better fulfil the spirit of them.
We cannot fulfil the spirit of any founder's instruc-
tions if we speak of that which does not concern
our own age, however much it may have concerned
his. I have adhered in this instance to language
of the 17th century because I consider it the best
language for the 19th century, because I think
Casuistry is even more wanted for the England of
our days than for the England of any previous
day.
190
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IX.
Am I then using the word Casuistry in some
The word unwonted sense? There is an excuse for the suspi-
Casuistry
used in its cion, since I have told you that I entirely disclaim
ordinary
sense.
an office which many Casuists have deemed their
principal one. I do not undertake to lay down
any rules for the Conscience. I have tried to
show you why I think no rules can be of use to
the Conscience. If you say, 'Then you are delu-
'ding us by the use of an ancient phrase; you still
'call your instrument the same knife though it
‘has a new blade and a new handle;' my answer
is, 'No! I adhere strictly to the original sense of
'the word. It always meant the study of Cases of
'Conscience. That is what I mean by it.' The
reason I gave for not liking rules of Conscience,
even when they are recommended by such elo-
quence as Taylor's, was that they do not settle
the Cases of Conscience which they undertake to
settle; that they leave those cases more unsettled
than ever. Cases of Conscience want, I think,
a different treatment. The Conscience asks for
Laws, not rules; for freedom, not chains; for Edu-
cation, not suppression. It is the Casuist's busi-
ness to give it aid in seeking for these blessings.
What special calls there are for his occupation
in this present time it is proper that I should tell
you before I conclude my Course. Then you will
perhaps see more clearly why I refuse to con-
found his work with that of the Moral Philoso-
pher, properly so called, why I suppose Casuistry
is the right introduction to Moral Philosophy.
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
191
of charac-
motives.
First, then, I do not think there is any kind LECT. IX.
of writing in our day which is so popular as Analysis
what is called 'the Analysis of human feelings ter and
and motives.' I am not speaking of philosophi-
cal books. I may allude to them by-and-bye.
I am thinking of newspapers, magazines, novels.
The greatest talent, so far as I know, which is
to be found in any of these, is exhibited not
in the invention of plots, not in that which is
properly the dramatist's art, the shewing forth
persons in action, but in the careful dissection of
their acts, and of the influences which contributed
to the formation of their acts. When such a
craft is much pursued, there will of course be a
number of bunglers in it; operators who give
themselves credit for the skilful and delicate use
of the knife when they have really no skill at
all and are never likely to acquire any, though
they may inflict considerable pain and do some
permanent mischief whilst they are trying to ac-
quire it. But if there are many of these, there are The skill
also many, both men and women, who display times.
a degree of cleverness in these processes which
would have caused our ancestors great admiration.
Though there is much delicacy of observation in
all the more eminent Essayists of the last cen-
tury, in the best of them a calmness which I am
afraid we have almost lost-though a novelist like
Fielding had a very remarkable insight into many
of the deceptions which men practise on them-
selves, as well as into some of their better impulses
of our
192
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IX. —yet in the peculiar kind of observations and
criticisms to which I am referring, I doubt if they
could bear comparison with several of our con-
temporaries who in mere artistical gifts may be
far inferior to them. Criticism is that of which
our age boasts, and in which no doubt it ex-
cels. We are nothing if not critical. Much of
this faculty may be directed towards books; but
the books are treated as indexes to the cha-
racter of the person who has composed them. He
is brought out of his hiding-place, even if the
critic prefers to remain within his own. I do not
regret that it is so. We
We ought to look upon
exhibitions books not as a collection of written letters, but
from whom as the utterances of living men; if they are not,
ceed. they are nothing. There may be much cruelty,
Books
treated as
of the men
they pro-
often much baseness, in the exposures which
are made of the ways and habits of authors who
have not been the least anxious to obtrude them
upon the world, who have only wished to say
something which they thought they had to say.
But on the whole it is good that a man should
be recognised as a being, and not merely as a
speaker; as having spoken out something of his
own very self. At all events, for good or for evil
it has come to pass that our discourses of every
kind tend to assume a personal character. Our
statesmen, soldiers, preachers, must either be pho-
tographed, or sketched by an artist who thinks he
understands their features better than the sun does.
To complain of that which one finds so much
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
193
may see
take motes
neigh-
the habit of our time as this is useless and LECT. IX.
not very wise. We are a part of our time; its How we
ways are our ways; in finding fault with them clearly to
we are sure to be unconsciously finding fault with out of our
ourselves. That is just the account to which I bour's eye.
would turn these remarks. I think a critical
age wants to be reminded that it is criticising
itself; and critical men that they are criticising
themselves. We are apt to forget that there is
a critic within us, a sterner, fairer judge than we
are, who is taking account of what we do and
speak and think; who is now and then saying to
me when I am pouring out my righteous indigna-
tion against the robber of the ewe lamb-much
more distinctly than any prophet could say it-
"Thou art the man.' The Casuist is called to re-
mind us of this fact. He must say to the critic,
Yes, this analysis of other men's acts and motives
"is wonderfully clever and acute. It may do those
"much good whom you desire to improve. But
"then am not I, are not you-conscious of some-
66
(66
thing which is nearer than that man's acts and
"motives? You pronounce what he ought to have
"done and ought not to have done. Is not that
ought' and 'ought not' derived from a Con-
"science to which thou canst appeal in him be-
cause it is in thee?" I do not mean of course
that such language should be addressed to any
particular critic in the flush of his triumph. Such
language would be merely tormenting to him, very
little likely to get a hearing. But when the critical
66
13
194
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IX. temper is diffused through a land so that it affects
all classes, all ages, both sexes, when it receives so
much nourishment from all that we read and all
that we hear, it does seem well that this branch
of our education should not be cast aside as if it
had lost its meaning. No general Philosophy can
supply the place of a personal Philosophy in an
age which loves Personality so much as ours
loves it.
Mr Thack-
eray's Ca-
suistry.
I used to feel a little irritated when I read Mr
Thackeray's novels, by his frequent interpellations
of 'Well Sir, or Well Madam, do you treat your
servants, or your neighbours, any better than these
gentlemen or ladies, whom I am describing, treated
theirs?' The repetition seemed to savour of man-
nerism; the writer appeared to be excusing offences
which deserved condemnation. I do not think so
now. I believe Mr Thackeray was aware of the
temptation which there was in himself to forget
the command, 'Judge not that ye be not judged;'
and felt that he should be doing his readers harm
if he suffered them to forget it. He was trying
honestly to correct a tendency which our age
cherishes, and which the most deservedly popular
talent may foster. I make that remark specially
for this reason. It may be said that the func-
tion I am claiming for the Casuist is rather that
of the preacher. Mr Thackeray used to talk of
week-day preachers, and to demand a place among
them for himself. As a Sunday preacher I am in-
wardly and painfully convinced that no persons
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
195
sup-
LECT. IX.
suist and
man.
more require the kind of monition which he
plied than those whose regular business obliges The Ca-
them to tell other men of their wrong doings and the Clergy-
temptations. Their function cannot therefore, I
apprehend, supersede that of the Casuist. Clergy-
men may learn from him when they are preparing
for their after work some of the perils to which it
will expose them.
supply pre-
for differ-
ments.
I might easily induce some of this class to
engage in the study of Casuistry, if I could hold
out a promise that they would obtain from it a
set of ready-made prescriptions for various dis-
eases of conscience, or even accurate diagnoses of
those diseases. I can offer no such promise. The He cannot
good which Casuistry can do us is, I conceive, of scriptions
precisely the opposite kind. It warns us against ent ail-
the quackery of these prescriptions; it shews us
why we cannot obtain any diagnosis of other
men's symptoms, except by acquaintance with our
own. But it is not therefore profitless to those
who encounter many troublesome diseases, and
are beset with demands for prompt methods of
curing them. That habit of looking for other
men's faults to which I have alluded is often sig-
nally punished. A man who has yielded to it
may begin to accuse himself as vehemently as he
has ever accused any of his fellows. He may be-
come the most laborious analyst of his own mo-
tives; he may turn his thoughts outwards, and
may pronounce them all selfish and base. That
kind of self-criticism will lead to no result or to
13-2
196
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
of Motives.
LECT. IX. very unwholesome results. It will be pursued for
The study a while, and then the self-tormentor will beg for
some anodyne or for some counter-irritant from an
external penance; in time he will probably be
weary of all such experiments, or will practise
them only as formalities, and will determine that
it is best to drift along wherever the currents of
fashion and opinion may carry him. The Casuist
would say to him, 'Neither this course, my friend,
'nor that will avail you. Suppose you have all
'these various or contradictory or bad motives that
'you speak of determining your acts, who deter-
'mines the motives? What are you? The mere
'victim of motives? Not at all. Thou usest the
'word 'I'; the conscience in thee says, These mo-
'tives have no right over me; I ought not to be
their slave; they did not make me.
Is there any
Does the
<
one who did? If there is, perhaps he will help me
'not to be their slave.' To that issue the Casuist
the motive would lead this curious enquirer into the different
man make
or the
man ?
motive the forces which are driving him to the right or to the
left. He may allow him to entertain himself with
Taylor's descriptions of the scrupulous conscience,
and the doubtful conscience, and the confident con-
science; if he has leisure for such a selection, he
may range himself in one class or the other.
But after all he must be reminded that the Con-
science in him is the man in him; he cannot divide
himself from it; he cannot measure or weigh the
fetters which bind it, but must above all things
seek to be delivered from the fetters.
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
197
as
the ground
of
And the Casuist may help him in some degree LECT. IX.
towards this emancipation by one suggestion. He Wrong as-
is not dealing honestly with himself when he says tf Right.
that there is nothing in him but what is mean and
selfish. He may think that he is exhibiting a
creditable humility in saying so. It is not hu-
mility at all, nor is it the least creditable. On the
contrary, he is often secretly crediting himself with
being better than he gives himself out to be, often
thinking that he may make a little capital out of
his self-depreciation. He will not be humble till
he owns that there is a good always present with
him, a good which he inwardly desires, a good
which he ought to pursue. Then he will begin in
very deed to feel the evil which is adverse to the
good; he will understand that it ought in some
way or other to be cast off. There is no work of
the Casuist more important than this, or more
needful in our days. Numbers
Numbers presume that
wrong is the law of their being, that right is only
the exception to wrong. So far as they hold that
opinion they never think that anything which
they do is really wrong, however they may pre-
tend to think so; they have no standard with
which to compare it. Wrong for them is right.
The Conscience protests continually against this
horrible inversion. The Conscience of a right
which I cannot let go holds me up when I am
most wrong. And the same Conscience says that
the wrong into which I have fallen never can be
*
198
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. IX. anything but wrong; anything but a contradiction
of the law under which I exist.
Systems
based upon
II. These are practical topics concerning every
the Exami- man, the most ignorant as well as the wisest. It
is with such that the Casuist is occupied. He
nation of
motives.
is to be testifying in season and out of season,
that the subject which he speaks of is a subject
for books only because it is a subject for men and
women, and that it would remain the same if
all the books that ever have been written were
burnt to ashes. But for this very reason he must
mingle in the battle of the books; he cannot over-
look the systems which philosophers are construct-
ing, and sending forth into the world. That is the
second topic of which I meant to speak. We have
heard in these Lectures that there are Systems,
very popular in our day, which present men
as the slaves of certain motives, which use the
analyses of these motives to determine what men
will be, must be, and therefore ought to be. We
have heard again that as the necessary corollary
from these maxims, they do not allow Right and
Wrong to be ultimate distinctions. Such teachers
may have done good in telling us what motives are
likely to influence us in different circumstances;
they may have done great good by correcting cer-
tain false impressions about these motives which
have been made the basis of legislation or of indi-
vidual actions. Of all this good the Casuist may
gladly avail himself. But he is bound to struggle
to the death against their primary assumption;
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
199
deniers of
Wrong not
tolerant.
that simply destroys what he maintains to be the LECT. IX.
root of a man's existence. If the System which The
starts from this denial were only a System, only Right and
for philosophical men, he might leave it to itself. specially
But it embodies and justifies all those tendencies
which I have just spoken of; those which take
a religious form in some, a form of worldly Cy-
nicism in others. They conspire with the popular
taste for detecting and exposing other men's
motives, with the more dangerous habit of de-
tecting and exposing our own. Though they
seem to treat all motives as inevitable and there-
fore as harmless, they do not involve the least
tolerance or tenderness to those who commit what
are to be called not sins or evils but only acts
'inconsistent with the interests of the Commu-
nity.' A man against whom, under that title,
Mr Bentham hurls his anathemas, might, except
for the honour of the thing, as soon be called a
bad man according to the manner of the ancients.
The Conscience of the philosopher slips in the
obsolete phrases which he ridicules with the in-
dignation which appertains to them. The Casuist
who maintains the language of the Conscience to
be the true language relieves the Benthamic curses
of many troublesome circumlocutions; he may lead
the curser to hesitate a little before he deals them
out.
6
Similar remarks apply to that philosophy which
would make our acts depend in a great measure
upon our emotions and upon certain conditions
200
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
tional
Nature
and the
Nervous
System.
LECT. IX. of our physical organization. Whatever any psy-
The Emo- chologist may tell us about these emotions,—even
if he succeeds in analyzing the feeling of a mother
to her child mainly into certain feelings connected
with the roundness and smoothness of its cheeks-
let us receive thankfully, in the last instance
with the wonder which some of old deemed the
first step to knowledge. Whatever wisdom the
teacher has obtained at second hand from great
physiologists about the brain and the nervous sys-
tem, let us accept, so far as we can enter into it,
with even more fervent gratitude. But the Casuist
having done all homage to these lessons, will
torment his instructor with these rude and trou-
blesome notes and queries 'Yes! that is very
'remarkable indeed. And do these emotions then
´and this nervous system make me? Did not you
say I had them? You might not perhaps think
'it worth while to give me the additional in-
'formation who I am?' No! that is not in the
bond. And therefore there is a function for the
Casuist, who asserts that it is not only in his
bond to consider that question, but that it is pre-
cisely the one which he has to consider. In this
case also it is not the System which he is at all
anxious to confute. But if there is a disposition
in our days to make our emotions, our nervous
system, or anything else, an excuse for not doing
what we ought to do, or being what we are
created to be-if that disposition as well as the
faculty which I have claimed for our age are both
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
201
flattered by the assurance that the highest philo- LECT. IX.
sophy is occupied in the analysis of these emotions,
tracing the processes by which the nervous system
becomes our supreme ruler; he must repel the
negations of the system that he may maintain his
own position.
lence and
of the doc-
Society is
the Con-
So it is also with that doctrine about Society The preva-
of which we have heard so much in these Lectures. popularity
Society has been used as a bugbear to frighten trine that
us; the Conscience must do what it bids or to make
cease to be. If that is Society there are no science.
terms to be kept with it. The Casuist's business
is in the name of the Conscience to mock it
and defy it. He must be more fierce in his mock-
ery and defiance than he might have thought it
necessary to be in any former age. For this
theory is put forth as the last result of modern
wisdom. It must spread wherever luxury abounds;
wherever the passion for liberty is changed for an
easy profession of liberality; wherever Opinion un-
der one pretext or other is confounded with Truth.
The worshippers of Society may soon tear each
other in pieces when they have to settle how its
votes shall be taken, who is to be the returning
officer. But all lazy people will agree that some-
how the strongest or the most numerous ought to
decide what they shall do or leave undone. If
the Casuist merged his work in that of the Moral
Philosopher he could scarcely, I conceive, hold his
ground in this conflict. He would then be always
harassed with the doubt, 'Am I to find the
202
LECTURES ON CASUISTRY.
LECT. XI. ‘individual man somewhere outside of Society?
'Or am I to trace his doings in Society?' The
satisfaction of that doubt seems to me this.
Why
Casuistry
should
precede
losophy.
You
Moral Phi- cannot contemplate the individual man out of
Society: you will scarcely find him among savages
if you look diligently for him. But you must
vindicate his position in order that you may shew
what Society is; of what it consists. If it does
not consist of I's, of Persons, the Moralist has
no concern with it. If it does consist of I's, of
Persons, begin with asserting that character for it,
then go on to investigate the relations in which
the members of it stand to each other. That
means, as I conceive, when translated into the book
speech, 'Begin with Casuistry; go on to Moral
'Philosophy. First make it clear what you mean
'by a Person; that you will do when you make
'it clear what you mean by a Conscience; then
'treat these Persons as if they did form real
'bodies, and tell us out of history, not out of your
'own fancy, what these bodies are.'
Hereafter then, in any Course I may deliver
upon Ethics, I shall be in the strictest sense occu-
pied with Society; but with Society, as consisting
of Persons; with Society, as implying the existence
of a Conscience; strong in proportion as that is
strong, weak as that is weak. We ought not to
overlook any theory about Society which has
had considerable influence on any considerable
number of men. But no theory ought to occupy
us except so far as it is an interpretation of
THE OFFICE OF THE CASUIST.
203
facts. The facts must come first; we should try LECT. IX.
and collect them as carefully as we can, in as
natural an order as we can; if the theories are
adequate to account for them, let us erect any
trophies to the authors of them that we think will
honour them most.
Politics.
For this reason I rejoice greatly that I belong Morals and
to a country which is so little interested in Mental
Philosophy merely as such, so much interested in
Politics, as England is. I believe the soundest
Moral Science will be that which is demanded
by the necessities of practical Politics; that out
of such a Science a living and practical not a
technical and artificial Mental Philosophy may in
time be developed. The Moralist never maintains
his own position so well as when he asserts the
highest dignity for the Politician. The separation
between them has been an intolerable mischief;
there will be Pæans in earth and heaven to cele-
brate their reconciliation.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M. A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
WORKS BY THE REV. FREDERICK DENISON
MAURICE, M.A.,
Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge.
The Ground and Object of Hope for Mankind. Four
Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge. Crown 8vo.
3s. 6d.
The Commandments considered as Instruments of Na-
tional Reformation. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament.
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