Question Two: On the Species of Conscience from the Part of the Subject or Certitude

83. Notions. - By reason of the subject, i.e., on the part of the act, assent, or adhesion to the object, conscience is certain if its judgment adheres firmly to something, doubtful if judgment is suspended, or opinative if it adheres to something not firmly but with fear of the opposite.

Thus certain conscience, as we have already said, is that which with firm assent and without fear of erring judges something in particular to be licit or illicit.

Opinative conscience is that which judges, not firmly but with grave fear of erring, that some action to be placed here and now is licit or illicit.

Doubtful conscience is that which remains suspended and does not give assent, and therefore judges nothing concerning the licitness of an action in particular to be placed here and now: this happens either on account of a defect of grave reasons, and then it is negatively doubtful; or on account of the equality of grave reasons, and then it is positively doubtful. Whence it is not properly conscience, because it is not a judgment, but rather is the absence of conscience; nevertheless it is called conscience reductively, just as privations are reduced to that of which they are privations: in that way omission is called a human act.1

Just as, on the part of the object, judgment is divided into speculative, speculatively practical, and practically practical (I, n. 200), so there is given:

1. Merely speculative doubt concerning the truth of a thing, for example whether Baptism is valid in rose-water.

2. Speculatively or remotely practical doubt concerning the objective and material honesty of an act in general and in the abstract, or concerning something pertaining to it, for example whether Baptism in rose-water is licit; and this is twofold:

a) Doubt of law, which is concerned with law as in the proposed example: whether concerning the existence of a law or obligation, such as rights, offices, and their conditions, causes, force, nature, object, extension, limits, etc.; or concerning the cessation of a law or obligation;

b) Doubt of fact, which is concerned with fact, not indeed in itself (for then it would be merely speculative doubt and in no way would pertain to practice), but insofar as it founds some right or some obligation and thus remotely pertains to law, for example whether someone has made a vow, whether there is no other water besides rose-water.

3. Practically or proximately practical doubt concerning the subjective and formal honesty of an act in particular to be placed here and now, for example whether it is licit here and now to baptize this child in rose-water: this alone is doubt of conscience.¹

¹ Several say that it is a judgment, expressed or at least tacit, concerning uncertainty, by which we reflexively affirm that our judgment, on account of the equality of reasons, must be suspended. This indeed can happen, while we reflect concerning the state of the intellect; but doubtful conscience does not necessarily include such a reflex judgment by which we affirm that we doubt. Besides, this judgment is not conscience, because it is not a judgment definitively applying science to a particular act or fact.

Only a certain conscience is the rule of acting prudently; hence it is asked how, by force of an indirect principle, a sufficiently certain conscience may be formed so that it may be a rule of acting prudently, and how conscience negatively doubtful - positively doubtful - and opinative may be laid aside and reformed.

1. Several authors, distinguishing speculatively doubtful conscience and practically doubtful conscience, say that with the former we act licitly, but not so with the latter. But the manner of speaking, although from the seventeenth century onward it is commonly employed, even by St. Alphonsus (Th. M., book I, nn. 20, 21, 22, 25), nevertheless is not to be approved. For conscience essentially is an act, namely, a practically practical judgment; but it is impossible that the same act or the same judgment be at once practical and speculative, certain and uncertain; whence there is not given conscience, i.e., an act of certain practical judgment, which is speculative or even doubtful. But it can happen that a man by a diverse act or judgment speculatively doubts, and is practically certain, i.e., is occupied in speculative doubt, and has a certain practical conscience. But that doubt, like the speculative judgment, is not a doubt or judgment of conscience, but precedes this.