Section — Bucceroni, Commentaries (1910)
I. On the Nature of Conscience
1.
- Conscience can be taken in two ways, physically and morally. Conscience considered physically pertains to Psychology and Logic, according as it is considered either precisely insofar as it is a cognitive faculty of returning upon its own acts, or precisely insofar as it is an instrument for attaining truth. But conscience taken morally pertains both to Moral Theology and to Moral Philosophy. Wherefore here the discussion will be only about conscience considered morally. We shall speak first about the intrinsic nature of this moral conscience, and then about its various divisions.
2.
- Law regulates human actions in order to their moral honesty or turpitude by the aid of conscience. For in order to regulate them, it must be applied to the action to be done here and now, so that it may be seen whether such an action is commanded, forbidden, permitted by the law, or counseled; and from this application a judgment is then formed concerning this or that action to be done or omitted here and now, and this practical judgment is conscience. Wherefore conscience is nothing other than a practical judgment by which we pronounce a thing to be done or omitted here and now as good or evil; and this by way of precept, or counsel, or simple permission. A practical judgment, that is, a practical-practical or proximately practical judgment. For a judgment regarding not an action concretely to be placed here and now, but the licitness of an action in the abstract, is also a practical judgment, but speculative-practical or remotely practical. - Therefore, as law is the objective and external rule of human acts, so conscience is the subjective and internal rule of those same acts; the former remote, the latter proximate. Hence human acts derive their moral, formal goodness or malice from conscience and not from law. For the object of the will is that which is proposed by reason. Whence it follows that, from the fact that something is proposed by reason as good or as evil, the will, while it is borne toward it, receives the aspect of good or evil. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 19, aa. 5, 6.
3.
- In order that we may form this conscience, we make a syllogism. In this syllogism the major proposition states the law generally. The minor proposition of the same syllogism compares the action which we wish to do here and now with the law. Finally, the consequent, from the conformity or deformity affirmed in the premises of this or that action with the law, pronounces that this or that action is to be done here and now as good, or to be omitted as evil; and this is called the judgment or dictate of conscience. Dictate, because to dictate is to command, to order; and conscience is, as it were, an interior law which binds man. Judgment, since just as a dictate concerns only those things which ought to be done or omitted, judgment also concerns those things which can be done or omitted. Wherefore conscience differs altogether from synderesis, which is the natural habit of the first principles of things to be done, which are the natural principles of natural law. - St. Thomas, I, q. 79, aa. 12, 13; I-II, q. 76, a. 1; De Veritate, q. 16, a. 1; q. 17, a. 1; 5, 2 d. 24, q. 1, a. 4; q. 2, a. 4; Suarez, tr. 3, d. 12, s. 1; L. I, n. 1, 2 (ed. Neap., 1819, unless another is expressly cited).
4.
- "And according to this mode it is clear how synderesis, natural law, and conscience differ: because natural law names the universal principles of law themselves; synderesis names the habit of them, or the power with the habit; but conscience names a certain application of natural law to something to be done, by way of a certain conclusion." St. Thomas, 2 Sent., d. 24, q. 24, a. 4. But from universal principles speculatively applied to particular matters, moral science is had, which deduces determinate conclusions, but in the abstract.
5.
- The Angelic Doctor, I, q. 79, a. 9, distinguishes higher and lower reason. It belongs to the former to judge according to the motives of wisdom; to the latter, according to the motives of science, according as reason intends, as St. Augustine says, in its judgment, eternal or temporal things. Hence the aforesaid comparison of the action which we wish to do here and now with the law can be made in two ways: in one way according to higher reason, or according to the knowledge of eternal things and of the divinely revealed law; in another way according to lower reason, or according to the rational knowledge of temporal things.
6.
- The Angelic Doctor himself illustrates by the following example the aforesaid syllogism by which we form conscience for ourselves, and the comparison of an action to be done with the law, by the judgment of higher and lower reason. "Synderesis," he says, "in this syllogism supplies, as it were, the major, the consideration of which is the act of synderesis; but higher or lower reason supplies the minor, the consideration of which is its own act; but the consideration of the elicited conclusion is the consideration of conscience. For example, synderesis proposes this: Every evil is to be avoided. Higher reason assumes this: Adultery is evil, because prohibited by the law of God; or lower reason would assume it because it is evil, because unjust, or dishonorable. But the conclusion, which is that this adultery is to be avoided, pertains to conscience." 2 Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 4.
7.
- Moral conscience, whose nature we have now described and of which we are speaking at present, is called antecedent conscience, so that it may be distinguished from another moral conscience, which is called consequent; and this is the conscience which refers to an action already done and to whether it was morally good or evil. Hence three things are attributed to conscience: to testify, to bind, to accuse, or to excuse. To testify, that is, to recognize that we have done or not done something; to bind, that is, to judge that something is to be done or not to be done; to accuse or excuse, that is, to judge that something which has been done was not well done or was well done. - But to avoid cavils concerning that prior conscience, namely that it should not be called conscience, since it bears judgment about a thing not done but to be done, for conscience refers to internal facts, we briefly note that usage has already obtained that it be so called. Usage, however, in this matter is a sufficient reason. But the very force of the name is in no way foreign to such a signification. For "conscience, according to the propriety of the word, imports an ordering of knowledge to something; for conscience is said as with other knowledge," that is, an application of knowledge to something, which is not done except through some act. Wherefore that act of the mind or intellect is rightly called conscience, by which a human act is directed in the concrete, or as to be placed here and now. And thence it is that synderesis, or the natural habit of the principles of things to be done, is also accustomed to be called conscience; for a habit is a principle of act, and "it is customary for causes and effects to be named from one another." St. Thomas, I, q. 79, a. 13; Laymann, l. 1, c. 2, n. 1; Sanchez, De Praec. Decal., l. 1, c. 9, n. 1.
8.
- Now the formal goodness or malice of human acts is to be taken not from consequent conscience, but from antecedent conscience. Hence those who study moral theology are sometimes deceived, because they think after acquiring the science that they sinned in many things; since they lacked that science when they acted, and then were acting in good faith. The same is to be said of the unlearned and of all others who, after hearing a sermon or after reading a pious book, begin to be troubled with anxiety about past operations. - St. Thomas, I, q. 79, a. 13; De Veritate, q. 17, aa. 1, 2.
9.
- If in that syllogism which is to be formed so that conscience may be had, the major proposition, or law, were always established with evident certainty, and the minor proposition, or that this or that action is contained in the law, were also always established with evident certainty, there would be given only one conscience: certain and right conscience. But since both the law and the application of the law often must be gathered by the force of difficult reasoning, hence there are various species of conscience. Nevertheless error, as is clear, can never happen by force of synderesis, but only by force of erring reason. "It happens," says St. Thomas, "that conscience errs, not because of an error of synderesis, but because of an error of reason; as is clear in the heretic whose conscience dictates to him that he should rather allow himself to be burned than swear, because higher reason is perverse in this, that it believes an oath to be simply prohibited." 2 Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 4.
10.
- Therefore conscience is divided: 1. Into right and erroneous conscience. Right conscience is that which dictates what is true; erroneous conscience is that which dictates as true what is false. Erroneous conscience is either vincibly or invincibly such, according as the error morally could and should have been avoided, or morally could not have been avoided. 2. Into certain, probable, doubtful, strict, lax, scrupulous conscience, according as it is founded on a certain, probable, doubtful, stricter, laxer, or wholly vain motive. Conscience that is only subjectively certain, that is, which is thought to be such, and therefore with certainty taken more broadly, and likewise probable and doubtful conscience, can be objectively right or erroneous. Scrupulous, strict, and lax conscience are referred to erroneous conscience. For without sufficient reason, the scrupulous conscience fears sin where there is no sin; the lax conscience bends judgment in favor of liberty, either to avoiding the law simply, or to lessening its obligation; but the strict conscience affirms either an obligation which is not present, or a graver obligation than is really present.
11.
- There are several degrees of lax conscience. It is Pharisaical if someone, making much of certain small observances, makes little of grave precepts; it is cauterized if, from a contracted habit of sinning, it makes light of grave sins. - Lax conscience is often not taken for conscience, which is an act of the mind and not a habit, but for a habitual disposition of the soul toward laxity; and similarly scrupulous conscience is not rarely taken not for conscience itself properly, but for a habitual disposition of the soul inclined to scruples. - Suarez, tr. 3, d. 12, s. 2; St. Thomas, I-II, q. 19, a. 3, a. 6 ad 2; Quodl. 3, a. 26.