Treatise: On Conscience in General

198. Object of the treatise. - After the consideration of the end and of human acts in themselves (according to the material and formal element), there must be treated 1) the rules of acts according to which they must be directed (the exemplary cause), and 2) their principles (the efficient cause). The principles are the powers of man, concerning which philosophy treats, and habits, whether good or evil, concerning which there is discussion in the treatise on habits and virtues. But the rules are two: remote, objective, and extrinsic, which is law; and proximate, subjective, and intrinsic, or immediate, which is conscience. Hence after the treatise on human acts there logically follows the treatise on their proximate rule, conscience. For just as an archer must know the rules according to which he ought rightly to tend toward the target, so man must know the rules according to which his acts are orderable to the ultimate end.

Now general morals regards conscience only in general, as it ought to be in order that it be the rule of our acts and have for this the required qualities; in no way, however, does it consider the individual particular states or all the species of conscience, nor the modes of prudently forming conscience or of sinning against it: for all these things now pertain to special moral theology, and indeed to the treatise on the cardinal virtue of prudence, whose act is a right and well-formed conscience. Therefore in the present treatise we shall speak of three questions:

1. For the general part of the doctrine on Conscience, cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 19, a. 3, 5, 6; Q. D. De Ver. 17; II Sent. d. 24, q. 2, a. 4; d. 39, q. 3, a. 1, 2, 3; Quodlibet III, 26-27; VIII, q. 16, a. 13; St. Antoninus, in Summa; St. Alphonsus, in Th. Mor.; Billuart, Bouquillon, Raphael of St. Joseph, Theol. Mechliniensis, Haine, in o. c.; Beaudoin, Tractatus de Conscientia; Noble, La conscience morale; Dumas, Theologia moralis thomistica, I.

1. of moral conscience according to itself (physical or psychological being);

2. of conscience as it is the rule of moral acts (moral being), or of the qualities required for moral conscience, namely, a) of its truth and rectitude on the part of the object; b) of its certitude on the part of the subject;

3. of conscience as it is the rule of supernatural acts (supernatural being).