NOTE ON THE MEANING OF CONSCIENCE.

Throughout this chapter, as well as some of the preceding, we have had frequent occasion to refer to conscience; and it may be well at this point to explain more precisely the sense (or senses) in which this term is used. The term is derived from the Latin conscire, to be conscious (of wrong). The Greek ovveidnois, the German Gewissen, and the old English Inwit, are similar in meaning. Conscientia used to be employed almost indifferently for conscience and for consciousness in general; and in English, as in French,1 the term conscience is occasionally found with the latter meaning. It is in this sense that Milton says, referring to the loss of his eyes,

"What supports me dost thou ask?

The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overplied

In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side."

But even here there is perhaps a certain implication of a moral consciousness; as there is also in Hamlet's saying,

"Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,"

though here it seems to mean little more than reflection. In Chaucer's description of the Prioress, where he says,

"All was conscience and tender heart,"

it appears almost to mean sensibility. But the definitely moral sense soon became established in English, especially under the influence of such writers as Butler. Even in the moral sense of the term. however, there is some ambiguity. It sometimes means a feeling of pleasure or pain, and especially a feeling of pain, accompanying the violation of a recognised principle of duty. At other times it means the principle of judgment by which we pronounce one action or one kind of action, to be right and another wrong. In the latter sense, again, it may refer to this principle of judgment as it appears in a particular individual or in a body of men. Such phrases as "the Non-Conformist Conscience," "the Conscience of Europe," and the like, illustrate this use of the term. We shall have to make some further comments on the nature of conscience, especially in dealing with the intuitional school of morals and with the social nature of the moral consciousness. But this much seemed necessary at present by way of general explanation of the use of the term.

1 Malebranche and some other French writers use the term con science, more particularly in the sense of self-consciousness.

BOOK II.

THEORIES OF THE MORAL STANDARD.

CHAPTER I.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETHICAL THOUGHT.

I

§ 1. EARLY GREEK ETHICS.-Thought on Ethics, as on most other scientific subjects, first took definite shape among the Greeks. Attention, however, was not strongly drawn to this subject till a considerable time after philosophical thought in general had begun to develop. The earliest thinkers among the Greeks directed their attention chiefly to physical inquiriesespecially to the question, What is the world made of? Two of the physical philosophers, however, do appear to have touched with some definiteness upon the ethical problem-vis. Heraclitus and Democritus (sometimes. known as the "weeping" and the "laughing" philosopher). These two may be regarded as the founders of those modes of thinking which afterwards developed into Stoicism and Epicureanism respectively. Heraclitus took Fire as his fundamental physical principle-i. e. the bright and dry-and he seems to have regarded this as incessantly struggling with the dark and moist principle which is opposed to it. In the life of man he

1 For a more detailed account of the way in which this took place, reference should be made to Sidgwick's History of Ethics.

appears to have thought that this struggle can be found going on; and the great aim of the moral life is to secure the victory for the bright and dry. "Keep your soul dry," was with him the fundamental moral law. Hence also the saying, so often quoted, that "the dry soul [or the dry light '] is the best." This opposition of the moist and dry-the "blood and judgment "'— runs through a very long period of philosophic thought. With Democritus, on the other hand, the fundamental principle of morals seems to have been pleasure. But there is no evidence that either of these philosophers made any attempt to develop his ethical ideas in a systematic form.

§ 2. THE SOPHISTS.-Parmenides and the Pythagoreans, and indeed to some extent all the early philosophers, seem also to have touched, either in a purely theoretical or in a more directly practical way, upon the ethical and political side of speculation. In fact, from quite an early period, philosophy among the Greeks seems to have come to mean a way of living as well as a way of thinking. But it was that remarkable group of teachers known as the Sophists who seem first to have brought the ethical problem to the front. The

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,

That they are not a pipe for fortune's fingers

To play what stop she pleases."

On the views of Heraclitus, see Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 138, 139, 178, 179.

2 Not, however, sensuous pleasure. It was rather peace or arapaţia, Perhaps his point of view might be compared with that represented, in modern times, by Dr. Stanton Coit in a paper in Mind, Old Series, Vol. XI., p. 324 sqq.

Thus we hear of the "Parmenidean Life," of the Pythagorean rules of conduct, &c. Cf. Burnet, op. cit., pp. 29, 40, 182, 316.

aim of these teachers was to a large extent practical, ie. it was the aim of preparing the young men of Athens to be efficient citizens. In instructing them in the duties of citizenship, they found it necessary to inquire into the basis of political obligation and of social morality in general. This seems to have been done by them in general in a serious and candid spirit; but, naturally enough, inquiries of this kind tended to be somewhat subversive of the older moral standards, and the more conservative minds were alarmed. This alarm found expression especially in the satirical drama of Aristophanes; and as Plato also shared, to a considerable extent, the unfavourable view thus taken of the tendency of the sophistic teaching, the name of the Sophists has fallen into evil odour. Probably this is in the main unjust-perhaps in pretty much the same way as the criticisms of such men as Carlyle and Ruskin on modern science were often unjust. The Sophists were probably the most enlightened men of their day, and did more than any others to awaken the intellectual life of the city."

§ 3. SOCRATES.-Socrates was closely associated with the Sophists, and indeed was regarded by Aristophanes as the typical example of them. He was distinguished, however, from most of the others by the fact that he did not set himself up as a professional teacher, but rather regarded himself throughout his life as a student. of moral science. When commended by the oracle for his wisdom, he replied that it consisted only in knowing his own ignorance. By this attitude he displayed, perhaps not more modesty (for his modesty was at

1 Reference may profitably be made to the articles on the " Sophists" and "Socrates" in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

least in part ironical), but at least more earnestness than his fellow-Sophists. He was less of a dogmatist, because he was more clearly aware of the difficulty of the problem. The one point on which he was fully convinced was the unsatisfactoriness of the commonly received explanations of the moral life, and the necessity for a more scientific account. He believed that this was necessary, not merely for the satisfaction of speculative curiosity, but for the sake of practical morality. For it seemed to him that there could be no true morality which did not rest on a scientific basis. "Virtue," he said, "is knowledge" (or is science). He believed that if any one fully understood the nature of the moral end, he could not fail to pursue it. On the other hand, he conceived that if any one did not fully understand the nature of the moral end, he could not be moral except by accident; and this is not, in the full sense, morality at all. Whatever is not of knowledge is sin.' As to the nature of the moral end, however, Socrates only professed to be an inquirer. The view that he suggested seems sometimes to have leaned to Hedonism; 2 but there is no reason to suppose that he had explicitly developed any theory on the subject. The fact that diverse schools arose, claiming him as

1 This is perhaps a slight exaggeration. But Socrates, like Plato, maintained that to be temperate or courageous without knowledge is to be temperate by a kind of intemperance or courageous by a kind of cowardice. He even went so far as to say that it is better to do wrong consciously than unconsciously; since the former involves at least the knowledge of right. Cf. Zeller's Socrates and the Socratic Schools, p. 147.

2 In Plato's Protagoras he is represented as definitely putting forward such a doctrine; and there are also indications of the samę tendency in Xenophon's Memorabilia,