RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Conscience
liarity of this earliest scientific treatment of the subject is the introduction of the idea of synteresis, interpreted by the scholastics, in dependence upon the Aristotelian psychology, as the practical intellect, i.e., in their conception, the potentia or habitus of moral principles, while conscientia is distinguished from it as the application of these to the individual act. With this distinction came in the idea of the fallibility of the conscience; and so the door was opened to all sorts of hair-spHtting judgments, exemplified in the books on casuistry. The extreme result of this tendency is seen among the Jesuits, whose moral system knows nothing of synteresis, and regards conscientia as a prejudice to be removed by probabilism (see Ethics, II., § 9). The Latin mysticism, on the other hand, made a fruitful use of the scholastic doctrine when, following patristic hints, it defined (especially in Gerson) the synteresis as the power by which the soul longs and is able to come into immediate contact with God.
The attention paid by both professional theologians and the practical system of the Church to the conscience, far as it went beyond New 4. The Re- Testament limits, was a reason why
formers, conscience was such an important factor in the discussions of the Reformation. These, however, derive rather from Bernard and Abelard than from the schoolmen. To Luther and his fellows it was now the independent consciousness of duty, now the sorrowful consciousness of sin, the accuser not to be silenced except in the assurance of justification by faith. In whatever terms it is defined, it amounts to the relation of the moral life to God, with its judging, even its condemning, function principally emphasized; it is the organ for the relation of justice between God and man. In like manner Calvin calls it " the sense of the divine judgment and empire." Specially characteristic are the passages in which he deals with it, particularly in his doctrine of justification by faith and of Christian liberty. The eye of faith now looks out boldly and clearly from the secure watch-tower of unconditional religious obligation over the broad domain of freedom of conscience.
The way in which the orthodox theologians spoke of the Christian conscience, presupposing a relation of religious dependence upon God 5- Modern and obligation to obey his law, was Philoso- attacked by EngHsh deism when it phers. opposed the natural as the universal to the positive historical as the unsupported particular. Since Hutcheson it had been customary in England to replace " innate ideas " by the moral sense, understood so as to combine this moral obUgation with intellectual skepticism as to a universally binding ethical law, and to deny any religious relation. The ultimate consequence of this opposition between nature and history is seen in Rousseau, whose " natural conscience " was a mere instinct leading to morality, with no content of guilt or obligation. Kant, on the other hand, emphasized and recognized an inner tribunal of incomparable dignity. Fichte defined conscience as " the immediate consciousness of specific duty,"
which involves the unconditional certainty of a consciousness of duty with which a practical judgment, logically deduced from recognized premises, is endowed. The exaggerated emphasis laid upon formal certainty led to the extension of the word to a judgment of taste in all practical relations, as with Herbart and with Krauss (" the innate necessity to have an ideal and to acknowledge it as a judge set over us "), and thus in the modern phrase " the artistic conscience." This is a notable declension from the former high claims; and it goes still further when Hegel, though recognizing unconditional subjective certainty from the standpoint of morality, insists that it must be measured by the idea or the objectivity of social ethics; when Schopenhauer replaces the infallible, imperative consciousness of duty by a " protocol of facts," which is a purely objective and empirical standard. Since his day there has been an increasing tendency to substitute for the self-conscious autonomy of the subject the cultural development of society, and to regard conscience, with Spencer, as a product of education, good or bad.
This, then, raises the first of the points most discussed in modern theological treatises; whether conscience is an innate, primeval thing, 6. Present- and then whether it is only a subjec- Day Prob- tive phenomenon, the formal consciouslems. ness of duty, or has a content from without. This, with the other question of the relation of religion and morality, is a matter of great interest to those who now discuss religion from the anthropological standpoint. The solution of the problem, however, depends as a rule upon the general views held by each of the many authors who have recently treated the subject of conscience. A further question, this time rather a practical than a theoretical one, deals with freedom of conscience. This depends upon the individuality of the conscience, and is opposed to the claim that one may be morally bound by any other authority than that of God. Such a claim appears in its most obvious form when an institution like the Roman Catholic Church identifies its utterances with the divine revelation. From the Reformers' protest against such a claim have sprung first the demand for the free exercise of religion within the limits of the social order, and then that of unrestricted expression of any religious or ethical conviction; but such unqualified freedom would obviously imperil all ordered social life.
(M. Kahler.) The moral law originates in custom and is at first identical with it, as is evident in the terms " ethics " and " morals." The outstanding, 7; Intu- most advantageous, and necessary cusitional and toms are crystallized into positive law; Evolution- later, positive laws conflict with cusary Views, tom or with each other. This conflict may be resolved temporarily by casuistry or by making one command supreme. And the validity of the moral law may for a time rest back on punishment. Attempts to find an ultimate basis of the moral law in the nature of man have given rise to two theories of conscience, the intuitional and the evolutionary. According to the
Oonsoienoe
Consilia Evangrelica