The nature and authority of conscience

THE voice of conscience is the authoritative guide of man’s moral conduct. Not that the individual conscience is independent of all authority; if the individual conscience is right, it proclaims the duty of submitting to all properly constituted authority, and especially to the supreme and absolute authority of God. It is, as theologians are fond of saying, the herald or ambassador of God to each individual, making known to him and applying the eternal law of God to the conduct of life.

Although the term is also used with other meanings, here conscience signifies a dictate of the practical reason deciding that a particular action is right or wrong. The process by which we arrive at this judgement of the practical reason may be put in the form of a syllogism. The major premise will be some general law of conduct, the minor will be its application to the particular case, the conclusion will be the judgement, which is nothing else but conscience. Thus when a precept has been given by one who is in lawful possession of authority, the dictate of conscience is implicitly arrived at somewhat as follows: I must obey all who command me with lawful authority. A.B. commands me with lawful authority. Therefore I must obey him is the conclusion and the dictate of conscience.

The notions which recur most, and the prior exposition of which is of the greatest importance, are those of certainty, opinion, and doubt. For the sake of completeness we shall add some points concerning the notion of probability, the immoderate use of which has so greatly entangled the treatise on conscience.

I. Certainty is the state of a mind adhering to some knowable thing without a prudent fear of erring. It is said "without a prudent fear"; for an imprudent fear is not always absent even from the certainty of faith. "But sometimes," says Aquinas, "the possible intellect is determined to this, that it totally adhere to one part" (De Verit., q. 14, a. 1). And elsewhere: "Certainty is nothing other than the determination of the intellect to one" (In III Sent., dist. 23, q. 2, a. 4, sol. 3).

Certainty is distinguished into metaphysical, physical, and moral, according as it is founded in the essences of things, in physical laws, or in moral laws, that is, those which govern the inclinations and morals of human beings.

Moral certainty is usually divided into strict and broad. Strict certainty is that of which we have just spoken. Broad certainty is that which includes some prudent fear, or "which does not exclude every prudent fear" (St. Alphonsus, I, 81); hence it cannot be called certainty properly so called, but must be referred to opinion, as will be more evident from what is to be said.

II. Opinion is the state of a mind adhering to some knowable thing with a prudent fear of erring. "But sometimes the intellect is inclined more to one thing than to another; yet that which inclines it does not sufficiently move the intellect to this, that it determine it totally to one of the parts; hence it indeed accepts one part, yet it always doubts about the opposite: and this is the disposition of one opining, who accepts one part of a contradiction with fear of the other" (St. Thomas, De Verit., q. 14, a. 1). And elsewhere: "One opining has thought without perfect assent; but he has something of assent, insofar as he adheres to one more than to another" (In III Sent., dist. 23, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1). Moreover, one opining gives the fearful assent of which there has been speech to a proposition, or to one part of a contradiction, as true. "One opining," says St. Thomas, "says (certainly with fear) that what he opines is true" (In VI Eth., lect. 8).

Corollary I. One who opines that a law exists does not wholly ignore the existence of the law, but knows it in some measure, or truly has a positive cognition of it, although a weak one.

Corollary II. One who opines that a law exists holds the opinion favoring the law as certainly more probable, but the opinion which supports liberty as certainly less probable. But since a small excess of probability is commonly not clearly, and therefore not certainly, perceived, an opinion that is certainly more probable will commonly be notably more probable, or certain in a broad sense, imperfectly and improperly (cf. St. Alphonsus, Lettere, III, n. 219).

III. Doubt is the state of a mind fluctuating between two parts of a contradiction because of no motives, or because of equal motives on both sides. "Our intellect," says the Angelic Doctor, "stands in different ways with respect to the parts of a contradiction. For sometimes it is not inclined more to one than to the other, either because of a defect of things moving it, as in those problems concerning which we do not have reasons, or because of the apparent equality of those things which move toward each part: and this is the disposition of one doubting, who fluctuates between two parts of a contradiction" (De Verit., q. 14, a. 1). Again: "When a man does not have a reason for one part more than for the other, either because he has one for neither, which belongs to one who does not know, or because he has one for each, but an equal one, which belongs to one doubting, then he in no way assents, since his judgment is in no way determined, but is equally disposed toward different things" (III Sent., dist. 23, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1). Nor does St. Alphonsus speak otherwise: "A doubtful conscience is that which suspends assent for each part of the doubt, and remains uncertain and hesitating" (I, 20). "A doubtful conscience is that which, remaining undeliberated, suspends assent for each part" (Homo Apostolicus, tr. I, n. 12). Therefore the Doctors whom we have cited teach that one doubting gives assent, not even a weak assent, to neither part of a contradiction as true. St. Alphonsus gives the ultimate reason for this matter in these words: "For although, when reasons of equal weight support each opinion, each would have force to move the intellect to assent if they were not mutually opposed; nevertheless, since here they are directly opposed to each other, each is now deprived of the force of drawing assent to itself, and by reason of the equality of the weights one destroys the other, and both therefore bring forth nothing except mere doubt" (Dichiarazione del Sistema, appendix, n. 21).

Suspicion is reduced to doubt, that is, the state of mind in which either opinion seems to someone doubtfully more probable. "As all," says St. Alphonsus, "both Probabilists and Antiprobabilists, agree, when there is a slight preponderance between two opinions, so that the excess is very slight and doubtful, then both opinions are regarded as equally probable according to that common axiom: A little is reckoned as nothing" (I, 55, 7th ed.). Likewise St. Thomas: "Certain acts of the intellect have unformed thought without firm assent, whether they incline to neither part, as happens to one doubting, or incline more to one part, but are supported by some slight sign, as happens to one suspecting, or adhere to one part, yet with fear of the other, which happens to one opining" (II-II, q. 2, a. 1). Again: "Reason takes what is little as though it were nothing" (I-II, q. 14, a. 4).

Doubt, or a doubt, is distinguished:

1. Into strict and broad doubt. Strict doubt, or doubt properly so called, is that which we have just described. Broad doubt is some such doubting or hesitation which remains in the state of opinion; hence it is only doubt taken improperly.

Strict doubt is divided into positive and negative, according as someone doubts because of equal or nearly equal motives, or because of no motives, or slight motives, on either side.¹

2. Into speculative and practical doubt, according as the doubt concerns the morality of an action considered in the abstract, for example whether it is licit to paint on a feast day, or concerns the morality of an action viewed in particular, for example whether it is licit for me to paint on this feast day (St. Alphonsus, I, 21).

3. Into doubt of law and doubt of fact. Doubt of law is had when there is doubt about the existence, sense, extension, or cessation from within of a law or disposition; for example, if there is doubt whether it is licit to paint on a feast day. Doubt of fact obtains when there is doubt about a particular fact or thing on which the application of a law or disposition to a particular case depends; for example, if there is doubt whether someone has fulfilled the law or is excused from the law. Yet authors do not agree in delineating doubts of law and of fact.

IV. Probability, or a probable sententia (opinion),² is taken by different persons in a different sense. Some call that opinion probable which rests on a grave foundation, even though perhaps on a foundation certainly less grave than the foundation of the opposite opinion; so the Probabilists. Others require that it rest on a foundation equally or almost equally grave as the opposite; so St. Alphonsus (Dell' uso moderato, c. 5, n. 25). Others require a foundation so grave that it merits the assent of a prudent man; this belongs only to the more probable opinion; so commonly the philosophers.³ An opinion thinly or doubtfully probable is not called probable except improperly.

A probable opinion is distinguished:

1. Into probable absolutely, or in itself, and probable comparatively, or relatively, according as it is probable viewed in itself alone or compared with the opposite. What is comparatively probable is either far more probable, or most probable; or certainly, or much, more probable; or equally, or almost equally, probable; or, as others add, certainly, or much, less probable.⁴

2. Into probable in the logical sense and probable in the ethical or practical sense. Probable in the logical sense is what has grave reasons, or reasons fit for proving. Probable in the ethical sense is what has reasons so grave that, at least by force of a reflex principle, it can direct actions, or be approved for practice.

3. Into probable intrinsically and probable extrinsically. An opinion is called probable intrinsically if it is probable because of intrinsic reasons; probable extrinsically if such great extrinsic authority supports it that, because of that authority, it is prudently held as intrinsically probable. From these things it is clear that extrinsic probability is resolved into intrinsic probability. Besides, concerning extrinsic probability, first note proposition 27, condemned by Alexander VII: "If a book belongs to some junior and modern author, the opinion ought to be judged probable so long as it is not established that it has been rejected by the Holy Apostolic See as improbable."⁵ Then observe these things:

a) "The authority of writers must be estimated not from their multitude, but from their weight; so that the authority of few, or even of one doctor endowed with special knowledge and piety, is sometimes to be preferred to many others" (St. Alphonsus, Diss. de usu mod. op. prob., n. 88, year 1757).⁶

b) The authority of St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus is very great. That St. Thomas is to be preferred to all others, no one today will deny. Moreover, from the various ecclesiastical documents by which the doctrine of St. Thomas is celebrated and inculcated in an entirely singular way, it is enough to recall to mind the encyclical Aeterni Patris (4 Aug. 1879), the Motu Proprio of Pius X, De Studio doctrinae S. Thomae in scholis catholicis promovendo (29 Jun. 1914), and canons 589, § 1 and 1366, § 2.

The very great authority of St. Alphonsus is clear both from the fact that he was raised to the dignity of Doctor of the Church,⁷ and from the many, and singular, praises by which the Church has not ceased to adorn and commend his doctrine.⁸ Hence in controversial matters those authors should be consulted cautiously who easily withdraw from the doctrine of St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus, and who are struck by these words which Mercurelli, at the command of Pius IX, wrote back to Vitozza, who had defended the doctrine of St. Alphonsus against Ant. Ballerini: "His Holiness judged it commendable that you undertook to defend the praises bestowed by the Church upon the doctrine of St. Alphonsus, and that you took pains to meet the malice of those who, abusing the dispositions instituted concerning that same doctrine, tried to depress it."⁹

c) Concerning the manner in which St. Alphonsus gives his judgment about the value of opinions, it is useful to note these things:

(alpha) Generally, for him that opinion is practically probable which he calls probable.

(beta) If he calls one opinion more probable and another probable, he understands them as doubtfully more probable and doubtfully less probable, so that the latter too is held by him as practically probable.¹⁰ If concerning some opinion he says, "It is said not improbably," or "It does not seem improbable," or "Authors say probably," or, for example, "Lugo probably says," then regularly he holds the opinion in question as practically probable. If, once the doctrine set forth has been proved, he adds, for example, "Lugo observes," commonly he approves such an observation.

(gamma) If he writes, "The Doctors say that it is probably licit," from this it is not certainly clear what he himself thinks. If he calls certain opinions neither probable nor improbable, he keeps silent about his judgment concerning them. If he calls one opinion more probable, but gives no judgment about the opposite, or says of it, "I do not dare to condemn it"; "I do not dare to call it improbable," he does not therefore pronounce it practically probable, but leaves the matter to the judgment of others (Preface of St. Alphonsus, bk. V, n. 76).

(delta) If he calls some opinion truer, far, much, notably, certainly more probable, or more common and more probable, he does not hold the opposite as sufficiently founded.

(epsilon) If he calls an opinion common or more common, and gives no judgment about the opposite, the former commonly must be called his own.

Finally, if there is doubt about the doctrine of the holy Doctor, sometimes the doubt can be resolved from a comparison of different works and places.

¹ But if St. Alphonsus (I, 20) states that positive doubt is had "when for each part, or at least for one, there is a grave motive," he takes the word "doubt" in the broader sense, insofar as it includes both strict and broad doubt.

² It is better called an opinion (sententia) than an opinion (opinio), because opinio designates a state of mind.

³ Cf. De Minusprobabilismo, pp. 14-17.

⁴ An opinion which by some is called the only probable one falls into an opinion certain in the broad sense.

⁵ Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1127.

⁶ Among grave authors St. Alphonsus counts: Suarez, Soto, Azor, Canus, Sylvius, Cajetan, Banez, Navarrus, Paludanus, Toletus, Sylvester, Lessius, Molina, Sanchez, Angelus, Vasquez, Armilla, Valentia, Layman, de Lugo, Castropalaus, Bonacina, Emmanuel Sa, Pontius, Cabassutius, Collet, Roncaglia, the Salmanticenses, Petrocorensis, Abelly, Cardenas, Coninck, Gamachaeus, Isambert, etc., besides St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, St. Antoninus, and Scotus, whose authority indeed must be preferred to others (cited dissertation, loc. cit.).

⁷ This dignity, according to the doctrine of Benedict XIV, "does not pertain to doctors who have been in the Church, but to doctors of the Church itself" (De Serv. Dei beatif., etc., bk. 4, p. 2, c. 11, n. 11). For it, as the cited author teaches, there are required "eminent doctrine, notable sanctity of life... and besides this, the declaration of the Supreme Pontiff or of a General Council legitimately gathered" (loc. cit., n. 13).

⁸ It is pleasing to report some excerpts from certain ecclesiastical documents: 1. The Sacred Penitentiary on 5 July 1831 responded that a confessor is not to be disquieted who in the practice of the Sacred Penitentiary follows all the opinions of St. Alphonsus, although he does not read the works of the blessed Doctor except to know his doctrine accurately, without weighing the arguments or reasons on which the various opinions rest. Yet you should not apply these things to opinions which are sufficiently established to be opposed to declarations of the Church, or which someone, after perhaps making inquiry and taking all things into account, judges to be certainly less probable. 2. The Sacred Penitentiary on 19 Dec. 1855 responded to a certain professor that, notwithstanding his oath of following Probabiliorism and the opinions of the Probabiliorists, he could "follow and publicly hand on in all things the doctrine of St. Alphonsus de Ligorio." 3. The decree Urbis et Orbis, dated 23 March 1871, concerning the concession of the title of Doctor: "He (St. Alphonsus) dispelled and drove away the darkness of errors widely diffused by unbelievers and Jansenists, by learned works, and especially by treatments of Moral Theology. Besides this he clarified obscure things and explained doubtful ones, since among the tangled opinions of theologians, whether laxer or stricter, he paved a safe way by which the directors of the souls of the Christian faithful could walk with unoffending foot." 4. The Apostolic Letter in the form of a Brief, dated July 1871, concerning confirmation of the title of Doctor: "Intending his mind solely toward the glory of God and the spiritual salvation of men, he wrote very many books, filled with sacred learning and piety, whether amid the tangled opinions of theologians, both laxer and stricter, for fortifying a safe way by which the directors of the souls of Christ's faithful could walk with unoffending foot, or for informing and instructing the clergy." 5. Finally, the Congregations in their responses, repeatedly and expressly, referred questioners especially to the doctrine of St. Alphonsus (De Minusprobabilismo, pp. 46-48).

⁹ Nouv. Rev. theol. VII, p. 98.

¹⁰ Cf. De Minusprobabilismo, pp. 64-65.

Conscience can be taken both physically and morally. Conscience taken physically, or physiological conscience, is the cognitive faculty of returning to one's own acts. Conscience taken morally, or moral conscience, imports a judgment about the morality of our acts; and it is twofold, antecedent and consequent, according as it regards an act, or respectively an omission, to be placed or already placed. Antecedent conscience commands, forbids, or permits an act to be placed. Consequent conscience approves or reproves an act already placed, and consequently causes joy or remorse (St. Thomas, De verit., q. 17, a. 1). But it is clear that the morality of an action does not depend on consequent conscience, which follows the act, but on antecedent conscience alone; in other words, this latter, not the former, is the rule of morality. Hence our discussion concerns antecedent conscience alone.

I. Notion. Conscience, moral and antecedent, is a dictate of the practical intellect by which someone judges that a particular action is commanded, prohibited, or free for him (St. Alphonsus, I, 2; cf. St. Thomas, I, q. 79, a. 13; De veritate, q. 17, a. 2). It is said:

1. A dictate, because conscience is an act, not a faculty or a habit.

2. Of the practical intellect, that is, of the intellect insofar as it directs to operation what it apprehends. This belongs to the practical intellect, which "knows truth as the speculative intellect does, but orders the known truth to work" (St. Thomas, I, q. 79, a. 11, ad 2).

3. A particular action; for conscience is not a judgment about the morality of an act considered in general and in the abstract, but about the morality of an act viewed in particular and in the concrete (St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 2; St. Alphonsus, I, 2).

4. For him, namely, conscience judges about the morality of an act insofar as it belongs to the one judging himself, or insofar as it must be placed or omitted by the one judging himself, or can be placed or omitted at will.

5. Commanded, etc. That is, moral conscience does not judge about the utility or pleasantness of an act, but about its morality, that is, about the moral necessity or moral liberty of placing or omitting the act.

Corollary I. Conscience is the conclusion of a syllogism, at least a virtual one. The major proposition states some law. The minor proposition compares some act with the law; for example: Theft is illicit. But the taking of this thing would be theft. Therefore the taking of this thing is illicit for me.

Corollary II. Conscience differs from synderesis, from moral science, from casuistic science, from prudence, and from the last practical judgment.¹ Synderesis (Greek synteresis, that is, preservation) is the natural habit preserving the first and general practical principles, for example: good is to be done, evil is to be fled. Moral science is an acquired habit which concerns general conclusions deduced from first principles; for example: to each person his own must be left; but theft takes away from one's neighbor what is his; therefore theft must be rejected. Casuistic science is an acquired habit which applies the conclusions of moral science to particular cases considered in the abstract. But conscience applies general conclusions to particular cases, and to these as considered in the concrete, insofar as here and now they are to be brought into practice. Prudence is a habit which directs the intellect in deducing and applying conclusions. But conscience is the very act itself of applying conclusions to particular cases considered in the concrete. Finally, the last practical judgment dictates only that something is to be done or omitted; but it does not speak about the morality of the action or omission.

¹ Judgments formed in order to operation are distinguished into speculative, speculative-practical, and practical-practical. Speculative judgments regard the truth which founds the morality of a consequent act, for example the existence of some fact, as: Today is Sunday; or the value of an act, as: A sacrament administered in this way is invalid; etc. Speculative-practical judgments regard the morality of an act, but only in common, as: Mass is to be heard on Sunday. Practical-practical judgments concern the morality of an act in particular and constitute conscience properly so called, as: Today Mass is to be heard by me.

II. Division. Conscience is divided:

1. By reason of its relation to truth, into true or right¹ and false or erroneous, according as the morality which is predicated of a particular action is really present in the action or is not present in it (St. Alphonsus, I, 3).

An erroneous conscience is called vincibly or invincibly erroneous, according as the error can or cannot be driven out by moral diligence.

2. By reason of the morality which is judged to be present in the act, into commanding, prohibiting, and permitting conscience, according as something is judged to be commanded, prohibited, or free.

3. By reason of the state of the mind, into certain, opinionative, and doubtful conscience. Certain conscience is that by which someone judges firmly, that is, without prudent fear concerning the opposite, about the morality of a particular action. It is distinguished into two: directly and indirectly certain. The former rests on motives which show the objective morality of the action. The latter arises from a general, reflex, and certain principle, which is applied to an act about whose objective morality there is only doubt or opinion.² Opinionative conscience is that by which someone judges weakly, that is, with prudent fear concerning the opposite, about the morality of a particular action. Doubtful conscience is one which hesitates uncertainly concerning the morality of a particular action and suspends assent (p. 205; St. Alphonsus, I, 20).

A perplexed conscience is had when someone apprehends sin on both sides, and can neither form a safe conscience for himself nor abstain from choosing one side, as if someone judges, and persists in that opinion, that he sins whether by hearing Mass he leaves a sick person alone, or by remaining with the sick person he neglects Mass (St. Alphonsus, I, 10).

¹ Others call that conscience right which is prudently formed, whether it is true or false.

² Indirectly certain conscience is usually called probable conscience (St. Alphonsus, I, 40).

III. Directive force of conscience. 1. Certain conscience, whether true or false, or erroneous,¹ is the rule of morality; or it brings it about that an action has, with respect to the one judging it, that morality which is judged to be present in it. In other words, one who firmly judges that a particular action must be placed by him, or omitted by him, or is free for him, is in reality either bound to place it or omit it, or is free. For certain conscience involves a firm judgment about the ordinance of God the Best and Greatest concerning a particular action. But the mode or manner of acting must be conformed to such a judgment, whether it is true or false. For neglect of the aforesaid conformity would involve neglect of the divine ordinance itself (St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, c. and ad 3; I, q. 79, a. 13; I-II, q. 19, a. 5; cf. St. Alphonsus, I, 5).

2. Certain conscience enjoys the force described above not from itself, but from the power of divine law. The reason is that the power of obliging, or of morally binding, cannot belong except to a superior. But a man's conscience is not superior to the man himself. "Conscience," says St. Bonaventure, "is like God's herald and messenger; and what it says, it does not command from itself, but commands as if from God, as a herald does when he publishes the edict of the king"² (cf. St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 3).

3. Uncertain conscience, that is, opinionative or doubtful conscience, of itself lacks directive force, because direction necessarily takes place toward one thing, and therefore must proceed from a conscience which itself is determined to one thing. But uncertain conscience is not determined to one thing, but is disposed about different things. What must be done by one who is uncertain will be explained in n. 221.

Corollary I. One who acts against a certain conscience commanding or forbidding, whether true or false, commits as much and such a sin as he apprehends in the act. "A human act is judged virtuous or vicious according to the good apprehended toward which the will is borne, and not according to the material object of the act" (St. Thomas, Quodl. 3, art. 27).

Corollary II. One who apprehends the malice of an act, but thinks nothing, not even confusedly, about grave or light malice, sins only lightly. Nevertheless, commonly there is present, and therefore it is presumed that there is had, sufficient advertence and consent, though confused, to grave malice: first, if the matter is manifestly grave; second, if there is question of a man little concerned about the quantity of sin.

Corollary III. One who from an erroneous conscience judges that he sins, whether by not fulfilling a precept which he physically cannot fulfill, or by suffering an evil, for example rape, which he cannot prevent, does not sin. For there is physical impotence, and therefore the voluntary is lacking.

Corollary IV. One who apprehends sin on both sides should, if he can, form a safe conscience for himself by seeking the truth and by prudently solving the doubt, should it perhaps persist, with the help of a reflex principle. If he can neither form a certain conscience for himself nor abstain from choosing, let him choose what appears the lesser evil.³ If each appears equal, let him choose at will. If nevertheless he judges that he sins, he is still free from sin, because liberty is lacking and no one sins necessarily.

If he chooses what appears graver, he indeed sins, but only in proportion to the apprehended excess; since as regards the total malice he is not free, but he freely embraces the excess.

¹ Others add: provided it is invincibly erroneous. But certain conscience is necessarily here and now invincibly erroneous; for such a conscience supposes that here and now not even a suspicion of error is suggested. Hence such a conscience, if it commands or prohibits something, obliges, even if a vincibly erroneous conscience preceded it; if it permits something, it renders that thing licit here and now to the one so judging, although the erring person perhaps was not without fault led to such a conscience and therefore sinned before.

² In II Sent., dist. 39, a. 1, q. 3.

³ Of itself, that is, other things being equal, the transgression of a natural precept is to be guarded against more than that of a positive precept; of a divine precept more than of a human one; of a negative precept more than of an affirmative one.

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.

How manyfold is the acceptance of conscience? - Conscience can be taken in two ways, physically and morally. Conscience physically considered pertains to Psychology and to 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 of attaining truth. But conscience taken morally belongs both to Moral Theology and to Moral Philosophy. Therefore here the discussion will be only of conscience morally considered. We shall speak first of the intrinsic nature of this moral conscience, then of its various divisions.

What is the intrinsic nature of moral conscience? - Law regulates human actions in order to their moral honorableness or shamefulness by means of conscience. For in order that it regulate them, it must be applied to the action to be effected here and now, so that it may be seen whether such an action is commanded, prohibited, permitted by law, or counseled; from which application a judgment is then formed concerning such or such an action, to be effected or omitted here and now, and this practical judgment is conscience. Therefore conscience is nothing other than the practical judgment by which we pronounce a thing to be done or omitted here and now as good or evil; and this after the manner of a precept, or counsel, or simple permission.

Therefore in order that we may form this conscience, we make a syllogism. In this syllogism the major proposition states the law generally. But 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 of such or such an action with the law affirmed in the premises, pronounces that such or such an action is to be effected here and now as good, or to be omitted as evil; and this judgment or dictate is called conscience. Dictate, for to dictate is to command, to ordain; and conscience is like an interior law which binds man. Judgment, since as dictate it concerns only those things which ought to be done or omitted, but as judgment it also concerns those things which can be done or omitted. Therefore conscience differs altogether from synderesis, which is the natural habit of the first principles of things to be done, which natural principles are of natural right. S. Th. 1. p. q. 79. a. 12. 13, 1. 2. q. 76. a. 1, De Verit. 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. 1. 1. n. 1. 2.

What are antecedent and consequent conscience? - Moral conscience, whose nature we have already described, and about which we are speaking at present, is called antecedent conscience, to be distinguished from another moral conscience, which is called consequent; and this is the one which reports that an action already done was morally good or evil. But to avoid cavils about that former conscience, namely that it should not be called conscience, since it bears judgment about a thing not done but to be done, for conscience reports internal facts, we briefly note that usage has already obtained that it be so called. But usage in this matter is a sufficient reason. 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 that after gaining knowledge they had sinned in many things; since they lacked that knowledge when they acted, and were then acting in good faith. The same should be said of the uneducated and all others who, after hearing a sermon, after reading a pious book, begin to be involved in anxiety as regards past operations. - S. Th. 1. p. q. 79. a. 3, De Verit. q. 17. a. 1. 2.

What are the divisions of moral conscience? - If in that syllogism which must be formed in order that conscience may be had, the major proposition, or law, always stood with evident certainty, and the minor proposition, or that this or that action is contained in the law, also always stood with evident certainty, there would be 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.

Therefore it is divided: 1. Into right and erroneous conscience. Right conscience is that which dictates what is true; erroneous, that which dictates as true what is false. Erroneous conscience is either vincibly or invincibly such, according as the error morally could and ought to have been avoided, or morally could not have been avoided. 2. Into certain, probable, doubtful, strict, lax, and scrupulous conscience, according as it is founded on a certain, probable, doubtful, stricter, laxer, or altogether empty motive. Conscience only subjectively certain, namely one which is thought to be such, and therefore with certainty taken more broadly, as also probable and doubtful conscience, can be objectively right or erroneous. But scrupulous, strict, and lax are brought back to erroneous conscience. For without sufficient reason, the scrupulous conscience fears sin where there is no sin; the lax bends judgment in favor of liberty, either to avoid the law simply, or to lessen its obligation; but the strict affirms either an obligation which is not present, or one more grave than actually exists. Suarez t. 3. d. 12. s. 2;

S. Th. 1. 2. q. 19. a. 3, a. 6 ad 2, Quodl. 3. a. 26.

350. The word conscience, which is derived from knowledge,² designates several things, but especially: (a) the intimate sense, by which we perceive and discern internal sensations; (b) psychological conscience, by which we apprehend our spiritual operations, namely acts of cognition and volition; (c) moral conscience, by which we judge concerning the morality of our acts. Now the intimate sense, which is concerned with sensible things, is something altogether distinct from conscience properly so called, which perceives spiritual things. But psychological and moral conscience are not two distinct faculties, but one and the same faculty, namely reason (or intellect), which, insofar as it is conscious of spiritual operations, is called psychological conscience, - and insofar as it judges concerning their morality, is called moral conscience.

¹ St. Thomas, Ia, q. 79, a. 13; Ia IIae, q. 19, a. 5; Qq. disputatae, de Veritate, q. 17; Quodlibet., III, a. 26-27; Suarez, in Ia IIae, tr. III, disp. XII, n. 1-4; Salmanticenses, Tr. XX, cap. 7; Sayrus, Clavis regia sacerdotum casuum conscientiae, Venetiis, 1618, lib. I, c. 2-5; Billuart, De Act. hum., diss. V; St. Alphonsus, lib. I, n. 2-19; Brocardus, Tr. de Conscientia (Migne, Theol. Curs., t. XI), q. II, art. 1-5; Sporer-Bierbaum, Tr. I, n. 1-30; Elbel-Bierbaum, P. I, n. 113-141; Ball. P., t. I, n. 130-159; Lehmkuhl, n. 41-66; Muller, § 71-74; Bouquillon, n. 253-282; Bautain, La Conscience, Paris, 1869, ch. 13-14; Didiot, n. 233-253; F. Bouillier, De la Conscience en psychologie et en morale, Paris, 1872.

² Cf. Bréal and Bailly, Dict. etymol. latin, Paris, 1898, p. 327-328, where he also notes that the word scire (from which scientia is derived) primarily signifies the same as to discern, or to judge.

Moral conscience is sometimes considered as a habit, insofar as it inclines us to pronounce concerning the liceity of actions; more often, however, as an act, insofar as it brings forth a judgment. But it is an act of the intellect, not of the will; and in this it agrees with psychological conscience; but it differs from it because it is not a mere apprehension of the intellect, but a true judgment or dictate concerning the liceity of an act, or concerning its relation to the rule of morals: whether it is licit or prohibited, whether there is an obligation of placing it or merely a counsel, whether under grave or under light obligation. Nor is it a speculative judgment, but practical, because it does not regard the liceity of an action in general and in the abstract, but in particular and in the concrete; indeed it is a proximately practical judgment, because it is borne concerning an action to be placed here and now, and therefore expresses an order to acting.

351. Moral conscience is therefore distinguished: (a) from synderesis, which is usually defined as the habit of the first moral principles, or a certain innate promptitude of reason for easily knowing the first moral principles, such as these: good is to be done, - what you do not wish to be done to you, do not do to another, etc. (above, n. 221); (b) from science, which is knowledge of general conclusions deduced from first principles; (c) from prudence, which is the right estimation of all the circumstances regarding the morality of some action. - Yet it depends on these three: for it uses the knowledge of principles and conclusions, and also the prudent consideration of all circumstances, for judging whether this action in particular, all things considered, is licit or not.

Many say that the judgment of conscience is, as it were, the conclusion of some prosyllogism. Namely the major is some general principle, proposed by synderesis, for example, every evil is to be avoided; the first minor declares that such a genus of action is comprehended under the general law, for example, theft is evil; from this moral science infers that theft is to be avoided. Then prudence adds: but the action which is here and now proposed as to be done, all things considered, falls under the concept of theft; and the last conclusion is the practical judgment of conscience: therefore here and now one must abstain from that theft. - For the most part, however, conscience does not explicitly syllogize, but, with all adjuncts considered, by a simple judgment, without any reasoning, decrees that this or that action is to be done, or omitted.

352. Therefore conscience can be defined as a practical judgment concerning the morality of an action to be placed here and now.

This is conscience properly so called, insofar as it is the rule of morals. Yet under the name conscience also comes the judgment which our reason bears concerning the morality of a past act: when it approves this, it is called the testimony of a good conscience; but if it reproves it, it is called remorse or the worm of conscience. Here we treat of conscience properly so called.

1. Many moderns do not distinguish the intimate sense from conscience; Rabier reports their various theories concerning the nature of conscience, Psychologie, ch. 6, p. 52-79. - Some think that conscience is a special faculty distinct from the intimate sense and the intellect: thus Reid, Garnier, Fabre, apud Bouillier, op. cit., p. 54-59.

Usefulness. The treatise of the greatest moment concerning the proximate rule of human actions must be introduced by a few notions, which prepare a distinct solution of questions not so plain and at the same time very practical, which are to be proposed in this treatise.

— I. What conscience is. Conscience, properly so called, is the knowledge which we have of several acts of our life, whether sensible or rational. For the functions of vegetative life lie hidden from our direct consciousness. Therefore it can be described thus: Cognition or attestation of one's own internal fact.

And this is psychological conscience, or conscience properly so called. But at the same time there accompanies us a judgment concerning the moral value of those same acts of ours. That is, spontaneously, according to moral principles, we judge concerning our action. This is called moral conscience. As, therefore, we distinguish psychological and moral liberty, so we distinguish psychological and moral conscience. St. Thomas treats of each conscience, De veritate, q. 17 art. 1.

Moreover judgment concerning our action is made according to moral principles. But the most universal moral principles - good is to be done, evil is to be avoided; precepts are to be fulfilled, promises are to be kept - become known to us most easily because of the inborn habit which, from a Greek word, the Scholastics call synteresis. Therefore synteresis is the natural habit of the first moral principles. And we call moral principles general dictates concerning things to be done, in order to the end of human action.

Therefore moral conscience itself is described: a moral judgment concerning our particular action to be done or done, to be omitted or omitted, according to moral principles.

— Conscience is the rule of morals. Human acts do not find their proximate rule in conscience in the same way in which they find their remote rule in law. Law is an act of a Superior; conscience is an act of a faculty belonging to the subject: law establishes the order, conscience knows the established order and consequently presupposes it; law commands, conscience intimates the precept of the law. Therefore conscience is the herald by whose mediation the laws of our actions are applied to us.

But that conscience is in this way the proximate rule of our human actions is clear from this, that the will is a rational appetite, whose object is not the thing as it exists outside us, but as it is present intentionally (or in the expressed species) in our intellect.

— II. How many kinds of moral conscience there are.

1. The moral judgment concerning our human action precedes and accompanies our act, or follows our act. Hence there is distinguished antecedent conscience, concerning an action or omission at hand, and consequent conscience, concerning an action or omission done.

2. According to the varied conclusion of its judgment, antecedent conscience is obliging, counselling, permitting, forbidding, according as the appetible thing presented is pronounced by it necessary, desirable, of free option, or to be rejected.

But consequent conscience testifies what we have done morally, and, according to the moral nature of the action, approves it, praises it, excuses it, condemns it. Here the appetitive faculty naturally inserts itself, of itself content concerning a good action, afflicted concerning an evil one, so that there is a testimony pacifying and quieting; and remorse, of itself penal.

3. Conscience, like every judgment, of itself is right, or speculatively true, insofar as it dictates what is true. Yet by accident it will be erroneous, and that either vincibly or invincibly. But conscience which errs invincibly is nevertheless called right in a qualified way, i.e. in relation to the agent.

4. Conscience can be certain or doubtful. Certain conscience judges without fear of the opposite. Doubtful conscience of itself does not judge concerning the action, or reports nothing else except that the action is of doubtful honesty. But by the command of the will (which is moved by some perceived reason of good, v.g. of quiet itself from laborious investigation), doubt or suspension between each part can be converted into an opinionative judgment, at least on that side on which some motive of deciding appears. That judgment is made with fear of the opposite. But since that inclination of the intellect is made from the command of the appetitive faculty, there is not more of truth in opinion than in doubt properly so called.

5. Since conscience properly so called regards our action as such, of itself its certainty or doubt is practical. Nevertheless speculatively and practically certain or doubtful conscience is distinguished. The former is concerning the quality of the action considered in itself; the latter concerning the action as it will be done by me in the concrete.

What certainty is considered here. But observe that in our present condition we must be content, in practical matters in which principles must be applied to contingent facts, with a certainty less strict than that which is proper to speculative science. This certainty is called moral, because, according to the common estimation of men, it is sufficient for acting. "When I say conscience," says St. Thomas, "I do not say or imply knowledge only strictly accepted, as it is only of truths, but knowledge accepted in a broad way, for any cognition whatsoever, according as, in the common use of speaking, we are said to know everything which we know" ¹. Thus we say that we know what one upright man tells us is established to him; thus we think ourselves certain concerning validly received baptism, etc.

6. Since what is reported to us is not the habitual state, but the present fact of our life, conscience properly so called always signifies an act. There is no habitual conscience. Yet for rightly judging we are aided by habits. Hence, besides actual conscience, there is also distinguished habitual conscience, which is a habit or inclination, partly acquired, toward making moral judgments. Improperly, however, conscience is sometimes called the very potency or faculty of eliciting moral judgments.

¹ De veritate, q. 17 art. 2 ad 2.

— How many kinds of habitual conscience there are. Taken for a habit, conscience is called tender or timorous, which with outstanding rectitude discerns slight reasons of good or evil.

Scrupulous is that which is agitated in its judgments by illegitimate fear.

Lax is that which is accustomed to be deceived by false excuses. It can also be called harder, insofar as, when the reason of evil has been perceived, it is moved with greater difficulty.

Strict, on the contrary, or rather rigid, is that which cannot use an equitable tempering of obligations, or epikeia: therefore it is incomplete.

Pharisaic is that false conscience which the Lord noted in the Pharisees: these, strict in the smallest matters, were found lax in greater duties, or also by a certain graver hypocrisy were disguising those things from themselves and others (Cf. St. Matt. 23, 23-24 [printed: 24, 24]).

Finally, cauterized is the false conscience which is almost lacking in the very sense or appetite of honesty. The name is taken from 1 Tim. 4, 2.

The distinction of conscience into actual and habitual divides the treatise into two titles, one concerning actual conscience, the other concerning habitual conscience.

First we shall speak of conscience as it is an act, then of the habit.

— Conscience properly means knowledge or immediate relation concerning our internal facts. This is psychological. In moral theology it is the moral judgment which, according to principles of things to be done, we elicit concerning our action. It is distinguished as antecedent and consequent, according as it precedes or accompanies and follows action; right or erroneous, according as of itself it judges according to truth, or by accident errs, whether vincibly or invincibly. It is also certain or doubtful, and that speculatively, concerning the action considered in itself, or practically, concerning the action as it will here and now be posited by the agent. With the appetitive part intervening, there is the quieting testimony of a good conscience, and the remorse of consequent evil conscience.

As the herald by whose mediation the laws of our actions are applied to us, conscience is the proximate rule of our actions.

Because of the moment which is in habits, besides actual conscience, habitual conscience is also distinguished; this is a habit, partly acquired, of making moral judgments. Habitual conscience is called, according to its varied quality, tender or timorous, scrupulous, lax, strict or rather rigid, pharisaic, cauterized.

Usefulness. - This whole title is most necessary in moral theology, since it explains the proximate rule upon which every moral judgment must rest.

301. Notion. The name conscience is used in diverse ways. Its principal significations are the following:

1. The common knowledge of several persons. (Mitwissen.) In this sense Cicero uses the word conscience, saying: "Do you not see that your conspiracy is now held bound by the consciousness of all these men?"¹

2. The act by which our soul perceives its own affections. (Bewusstsein.) This perception has for its object either sensitive actions (sensitive consciousness or common or intimate sense²) or intellectual actions (intellective consciousness). Each kind of conscience is called psychological conscience,³ concerning which philosophers treat.

3. Notice or memory. In this sense St. Paul writes: "By the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every conscience of men before God," and again: "But I hope that we are manifest also in your consciences."⁴

4. An innate readiness for knowing the first moral principles. This acceptance of conscience is not to be recommended, because this innate readiness is better called with the scholastics synteresis.⁵ It can more easily be admitted that conscience is a certain habitual knowledge of moral obligations (Gewissensanlage); in this sense we speak of a tender, scrupulous, lax conscience, etc., having before our eyes a certain habit or state of soul.

5. The judgment of the practical intellect, dictating from common principles concerning the goodness or malice of some act to be done by us (or already done). This is moral conscience; it is elegantly called the knowledge of the heart, and concerning it we shall now treat in this whole tract. The individual parts of this definition are explained:

It is said, 1°: judgment, because conscience is not a power nor a habit, but an act,⁶ which indeed is elicited by the power of the intellect through the mediation especially of the habit of Christian prudence. For conscience is nothing other than the application of science or knowledge to some particular fact. And this application of science is a judgment. Moral conscience performs two things, namely, before action (through a judgment concerning its goodness or malice) it urges one on to good and deters from evil; after the action has been perpetrated it punishes the evil action with remorses, which in Sacred Scripture are called the "worm" (of conscience); but a good action it rewards with spiritual joy and the sweet peace of the soul. All these functions, however, are acts and not habits or powers.⁷

In vernacular languages conscience signifies habit rather than act, and therefore there is speech about a habitual conscience that is scrupulous, tender, lax, etc., as was already said above in n. 4. Hence one must attend lest confusion arise.

It is said, 2°: of the practical intellect. The subject of conscience is not the will (as Henry of Ghent and others think, especially Protestants), but the intellect, and this as practical. For the act of conscience is not volition or nolition, nor a mere speculative apprehension, nor a suspension of assent, nor an opinion, but a practical dictate concerning some particular act either to be done by us or already done. Hence, for example, conscience does not judge concerning speculative truths, as for instance concerning the Trinity, concerning the validity of the sacraments, etc.

It is said, 3°: dictating from common principles. For conscience supposes and ought to suppose as true the common principles either of faith or of natural reason, and applies them to the particular case. Therefore conscience by no means judges concerning the natural or divine law itself, but only judges whether an act to be done by us or already done is conformable to existing just laws. It also follows that conscience is by no means autonomous (as Kant and his followers will), and that that liberty of conscience proclaimed by many moderns is false, which would be an altogether independent arbiter of good and evil.⁸

It is said, 4°: concerning the goodness or malice of some act to be done by us (or already done). For conscience is the subjective rule of morals. For whatever is judged by conscience as conformable with just laws is a subjectively good act, or at least not evil; but whatever is estimated as discordant from law is subjectively evil, although perhaps taken objectively it has nothing of evil.⁹ - The proper and primary office of conscience is to judge concerning an act to be done by us; for conscience is the rule of acts to be done by us. Consequently, however, it also pertains to conscience to judge concerning an act already perpetrated by us, as is clear from the words of St. Thomas cited above. In this sense in the Epistle to the Romans 2, 15 conscience is said to render testimony to man, their thoughts among themselves accusing or also defending.

¹ Oratio 1 in Catilinam 1, 1.

² Cf. S. theol. 1, q. 78, a. 4 ad 2; Zigliara, Sum. Phil. critica l. 2, c. 1, a. 3.

³ Cf. S. theol. 1, q. 79, a. 13. In this article the Angelic Doctor excellently describes both psychological and moral conscience: "Conscience is said to bear witness, to bind or urge on, or also to accuse, or also to gnaw with remorse or reprove. And all these follow upon the application of some knowledge or science of ours to those things which we do. This application indeed takes place in three ways: in one way according as we recognize that we have done or not done something, ... and according to this conscience is said to bear witness. [Behold psychological conscience.] In another way it is applied according as through our conscience we judge that something is to be done or not to be done; and according to this conscience is said to bind or urge on. [Behold antecedent moral conscience.] In a third way it is applied according as through conscience we judge that something which has been done was done well or not done well; and according to this conscience is said to excuse or accuse or gnaw with remorse." [Behold consequent moral conscience.]

⁴ 2 Cor. 4, 2; 5, 11.

⁵ Cf. S. theol. l. c.

⁶ S. theol. I, q. 79, a. 13.

⁷ To the point the Angelic Doctor writes excellently: "According to the mode of application by which knowledge is applied to an act, so that it may be known whether the act is right or not, there is a twofold way: one, according as through the habit of science we are directed toward doing or not doing something. In another way, according as an act, after it has been done, is examined according to the habit of science, whether it is right or not right. ... But according to each mode of application we use the name conscience. For according as science is applied to an act as directing it, according to this conscience is said to urge on, or induce, or bind; but according as science is applied to an act by way of examination of those things which have already been done, so conscience is said to accuse or gnaw with remorse, when that which has been done is found to disagree with the science according to which it is examined; but to defend or excuse, when that which has been done is found to have proceeded according to the form of science." De verit. q. 17, a. 1.

⁸ Cf. Pius IX, Syllab. prop. 3, 4, 56, 57.

⁹ Cf. below n. 302 at the end and 307 sqq.

302. Scholion. On the difference between conscience, synteresis, moral science, prudence, and natural law. In order that the definition of moral conscience may appear still more clearly, it is helpful to compare it with synteresis, moral science, prudence, and natural law.

Synteresis¹⁰ is the habit of the first moral principles, whose act is to dictate in general that good is to be done and evil omitted, or, as Blessed Albert the Great¹¹ says: "Its act is twofold, namely inclination to good and murmuring against evil." But it belongs to conscience to judge in a particular case what is to be done or omitted. Conscience can err, but synteresis never can.¹² Synteresis is beautifully named by St. Jerome and especially by the scholastics of the thirteenth century the "spark of conscience," the "little fire"; for synteresis is as it were a little fire kindled by the Creator Himself in our intellect; a little fire derived from the divine light itself according to that word of Psalm 4: "The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, has been signed upon us"; a little fire shining and burning: shining and showing the general principles of morals; burning, that is, impelling to good and drawing back from evil. But this spark is never extinguished, neither on this earth, when man becomes foul in sins, nor in heaven, nor in Gehenna. Hence St. Thomas¹³ says: "The spark of reason cannot be extinguished while the light of the intellect remains; but the intellect is never taken away through sin." This synteresis remaining in the damned is the primary cause of the so-called "worm," which does not die; for it always murmurs against the evil perpetrated and impels to good, which nevertheless because of the obstinacy of the evil will is also always rejected.¹⁴

Moral science deduces from principles objective conclusions, which are its proper object; but conscience is something altogether subjective, which can agree or disagree with moral science. Therefore in some men there is moral science rather great with a depraved conscience; but in others there is an excellent conscience with rather small moral science.

Prudence is a virtue and therefore a habit; but conscience is an act, as has already been said. There are three acts of the virtue of prudence, namely to take counsel, to judge, to command.¹⁵ The act of prudence which is to judge coincides with right conscience, to which it also belongs to judge concerning an act to be done or already done; but the act of prudence which is to command is antecedent conscience.

Natural law is a participation of the eternal law in a rational creature and therefore includes the objective principles of morality; but conscience applies these principles in order to judge concerning an act to be done or omitted. - St. Thomas briefly gathers this whole doctrine, saying: "It is clear how synteresis, natural law, and conscience differ; because natural law names the universal principles themselves of right; but synteresis names the habit of them; and conscience names a certain application of natural law to something to be done by way of a certain conclusion."¹⁶

Note. Although conscience differs from the enumerated norms, nevertheless it depends on them, because each one of them concurs in forming it; this becomes clear in this way: Synteresis proposes a general principle, for example, every moral evil is to be avoided. Moral science and natural law teach that fornication is something morally evil and therefore to be avoided. Then prudence adds: the action which here and now is proposed to be done is truly fornication. Finally conscience dictates that this action is absolutely to be avoided. From these things it appears that nothing prevents the judgment of conscience from being called the conclusion of a certain syllogism, in which synteresis and the other things are after the manner of premises. Therefore St. Thomas says:¹⁷ "Conscience is completed as by a certain particular syllogism."

Conscience thus described is the subjective rule to which human actions are to be conformed; for it is as it were the herald or voice of God, intimating and applying the divine law to us. This indeed is beautifully expressed by St. Bonaventure:¹⁸ "Conscience is like God's herald and messenger; and what it says, it does not command from itself, but commands as from God, just as a herald when he publishes the edict of a king." Hence it also follows that we must always follow conscience clearly commanding. Therefore Innocent III¹⁹ says forcefully: "Whatever is done against conscience builds toward Gehenna"; and St. Thomas²⁰ teaches: "Every will discordant from reason, whether right or erring, is always evil, so that he who acts against conscience sins." But I said: that man is bound to follow conscience clearly commanding; for if conscience does not command, but only counsels, or if the command is not so clear, as is accustomed to happen in the scrupulous, then the dictate of conscience does not oblige in that way.

¹⁰ Authors do not agree whether synderesis or synteresis should be written. Likewise it is not established whence this name synteresis, which is first employed by St. Jerome (In Ezech. 1, 7 [Migne, Patr. lat. 25, 22]), was taken. Perhaps it is a copyist's error for syneidesis. "Synteresis is the capacity, inseparably joined with the use of reason, for the binding grasp of the fundamental moral laws" (cf. Renz, Die Synteresis nach dem hl. Thomas vi).

¹¹ S. theol. 2, tr. 16, q. 99, m. 2, a. 3. The same is taught by St. Thomas, De verit. q. 16, a. 2.

¹² Blessed Albert, De creat. 2, q. 71, c. 2; cf. also St. Thomas l. c.

¹³ 2, dist. 39, q. 3, a. 1. Cf. De verit. q. 16, a. 3.

¹⁴ Cf. S. theol. 1, 2, q. 85, a. 2 ad 3. Blessed Albert and Alexander of Hales teach similar things, even if they do not agree concerning the function of synteresis in the other life.

¹⁵ S. theol. 2, 2, q. 47, a. 8.

¹⁶ 2, dist. 24, q. 2, a. 3.

¹⁷ Quaest. disput. de veritate q. 17, a. 2.

¹⁸ 2, dist. 39, a. 1, q. 3 ad 3. Already by Socrates conscience was beautifully called daimonion.

¹⁹ It is found in c. 13, X 2, 13.

²⁰ Quodl. 3, q. 27.

303. Scholion. Errors concerning the nature of moral conscience. Although all, even ancient and modern pagans, admit the existence of moral conscience in man, nevertheless very many have erred concerning its nature. Among almost innumerable errors the following seem to be the more principal:

1. Conscience is something pertaining to affection, or it is the act of some special ethical sense, which in English is called "moral sense." Thus Shaftesbury and all who defend moral subjectivism.

2. Conscience is nothing other than an effect of education and human intercourse, and therefore is very changeable according to the diverse grades of civilization. Thus Herbert Spencer, Robert Owen, and others.

3. Conscience is a certain illusion of the spirit; indeed an evil conscience is a certain disease of the soul. Thus Friedrich Nietzsche and other moral Nihilists.

There is no leisure to refute individually these and other errors concerning the nature of conscience. For they all remain refuted together from the true nature of conscience explained above.

135. Thesis. The cognitive faculty of morality is nothing other than the intellect, which under this respect is called practical.

It is proved: A. indirectly, by the exclusion of other opinions. The cognitive faculty of morality is not experience, nor sense, nor instinct, nor subjective affection. Therefore (cf. nn. 136-137).

B. directly: 1) morality is conformity or agreement with the rule of reason and the ultimate end, or difformity or disagreement. But that pertains to the object of reason or intellect. Therefore morality is known by the intellect.

2. Judgment concerning moral things is a certain truth. But truth is the proper object of the intellect. Therefore judgment concerning moral things pertains to the intellect.

It is called practical because as its object it has the proportion of means to the end, and thus is ordered to directing the acts of the will toward the end. But the practical intellect is not diverse from the speculative intellect. A faculty is not diversified by an accidental difference of the object. But the object of the speculative intellect and the object of the practical intellect differ merely accidentally: for it happens to something apprehended by the intellect that it be ordered to work or not ordered to it. Therefore the practical intellect does not differ really from the speculative intellect (I, q. 79, a. 11).

136. Moral Empiricism is opposed to the aforesaid doctrine.

Moral empiricism repeats the cognition of morality solely from experimental observation of utility. All things are changeable; the absolute is a metaphysical illusion; and therefore morality is essentially changeable according to circumstances. Hence the system in fact is reduced to evolutionism, which rests upon impulses had and transmitted from repeated sensible experiences through all generations. In this, reason has only secondary parts: for it follows inclinations and experiences what is, but does not dictate what ought to be. And thus ethics is a descriptive and explanatory science, not a normative one.

Now organic ethics, as it is usually called:

A. As to the foundation, supposes materialism or positivism, and consequently acknowledges only the ethics of utilitarianism or sensualism.

B. As to method, 1) it is incomplete: for determining the rule of conduct, historical and psychological observation of facts and actions is certainly useful, but it does not suffice, because the question is not only what men have done or do, but also and chiefly what it is fitting or necessary to do. To determine this, experience does not suffice, but the exercise of reason itself is required, by which we know the cause and origin of this fittingness or moral obligation;

2. it is maimed: they assert indeed that there is no man who ultimately acts except on account of his own advantage. And yet experience also teaches that there are men who spend themselves and all that is theirs on account of God or neighbor; and that the notion of the honorable and just, at least among many, is distinct from the notion of happiness: for certain acts are held as good, indeed best or heroic, which so far from bringing pleasure cause sadness and detriment; but others are depraved although they procure advantage, as if someone, by using fraud in playing, wins victory for himself and much money.

C. As to the matter: 1) it is insufficient. The value of a necessary principle is not from experience, and instinctive impulses do not constitute the principle of morality. For we must ask whether impulses or organic dispositions are the true manifestation of good, or rather an hallucination. If the first, this will be only because they agree with reason, and thus we return to our criterion. If the second, the universality and persistence of those hallucinations would have to be explained;

2. it is illogical, as opposed to experience: for if moral ideas and inclinations come from heredity, how does ethics give us the faculty, and sometimes the duty, of acting against instincts?

3. it is erroneous: it falsely asserts that duty is a natural or intellectual instinctive necessity; but that obligation arises from an intrinsic sanction, for example harmful effects, and an extrinsic sanction, or fear of punishments, which is threefold: social, by which the stronger impose their will; civil, by which the prince necessary to social order is feared; religious, by which the souls of the dead, especially of the prince, are feared. Now:

a) that is not the notion which we have of duty or obligation;

b) many do not perceive these moral sanctions; but those who know them could say that they yield to force, not however that they acknowledge obligation;

c) such obligation does not have force and efficacy in conscience, but rather is the destruction than the explanation of moral obligation: for it would be nothing except an action extorted by fear alone.

4. Hence the system is not founded upon positive experience, but is constituted rather from a series of hypotheses.

137. Moral Intuitionism is also opposed.

By this general name are designated all who agree in this, that good and evil are immediately affirmed from a certain intuition of some faculty, as the Nativists and Innatists hold in psychology; or who assert that morality is known by instinct or by a special sense, by which man spontaneously affirms good and evil without the induction of experience and without the deduction of reason.

A. Some say that it is known by a physical or bodily sense, such as the Sensists and Phrenologists, who admit nothing except sensitive cognition. Against this:

1. The assertion rests upon a false foundation; it supposes materialism and a false system concerning the criterion of truth.

2. In the sensist system, no freedom remains, which supposes the indifference of judgment, which cannot be given without intelligence. Hence it destroys morality in its principle.

3. Universals, abstract and immutable things, such as the moral norm, are not known by sense, which essentially is changeable and varies according to circumstances and subjective dispositions. Therefore it destroys morality in its essence.

4. The moral rule orders human acts. To order pertains to the intellect. Therefore the cognition of morality pertains to the intellect.

5. Sense experiences nothing from objects except pleasure and pain; therefore logically sensism must lead to hedonism or sensualism.

1. Cf. Roselli, Ethica, q. 3, a. 2.

B. Others say it is known by a certain spiritual sense of intuition or by an instinctive sense, which differs from the intellect and corresponds to a blind instinct by which we immediately know first principles, both speculative and practical. This sense is of the affective order and consists in a certain internal affection or sympathy or taste. Thus the Scotist school, the Sentimentalists, and many more recent authors, who all in fact are altruists. This system:

1. For the most part is founded upon a false criteriological system.

2. Is inadequate. It denies the rational element and attributes the first parts to the affective element, which is only secondary. Reason, namely, according to them, only observes, it does not dictate; and social utility must be embraced not because it is conformable to reason, but because affection and instinct incline to it. On the contrary, affection is nothing except a prelude or resonance of the judgment of reason, which is the norm of morality.

3. It does not furnish a certain criterion, but a fallacious one. For we are not always affected with sympathy toward moral good, nor always with antipathy toward evil; but other non-moral causes also, such as talents, qualities, a happy outcome, fruition, joy, can excite the same affections.

4. It does not furnish a universal criterion: for the multitude and society toward which we are bound to be affected with sympathy is subject to change; but what if men toward whom we are sympathetically affected incline to diverse things?

5. It does not furnish an objective criterion, but a subjective one: sympathy and antipathy are changed according to circumstances and persons.

6. It does not furnish an ultimate criterion: for sympathies and antipathies themselves are good or evil. Why, unless because they are conformable or difform to reason?

7. Just as human reason reasons concerning speculative truth, so also concerning practical truth. But it is absolutely repugnant that the first principles of speculative reason be admitted by a blind instinct and without evidence. Therefore the same is repugnant also for the first principles of practical reason, in practical or moral matters.

8. There are other instincts and intuitions, namely egoistic ones. But why must we pursue sympathetic inclinations, not egoistic ones? Either because they are conformable to reason; or because they are a fact of evolution. In this last case it does not follow that they are legitimate and good. And moreover persons of an egoistic character can provoke antipathy.

The moral sense cannot be distinguished from other experiences unless there is first a certain notion of morality; that is, unless reason has investigated the idea and value of morality, and distinguished it from merely sensitive, aesthetic, or social impressions.

They object: the spontaneity and universality and persistence of moral conscience among all men and through all times, which cannot be explained except by instinct and a special sense; and this is the only argument which they bring forward. Resp.: this proves a constant and native disposition for knowing the first moral principles, namely synderesis or the habit of first practical principles, just as there is the habit of intellect for first speculative principles; but it does not prove a blind instinct or a special sense. It is useless, namely, to recur to a distinct special faculty, because practical reason informed by synderesis is able to explain this, and it itself is not a faculty distinct from speculative reason.

C. Others who profess transcendental objectivism, or the transcendental or absolute idealism arising from it, recur to a blind instinct of the intellect itself, by which abstract and universal truths are admitted in such a way that their value is not demonstrated, because it cannot be demonstrated that they correspond to reality. Thus Kant and after him those who, relying on his principles, fell into pantheism, such as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Against this:

a) As to the foundation, this is a false criteriological system, or even pantheistic monism, in which case morality will be impersonal and supra-individual.

I. Question I. What is conscience? Answer. It is the dictate of our reason, concluding from the general principles of synderesis what, here and now, all circumstances considered, is to be embraced as good, and to be shunned as evil. It is called a dictate, or judgment, of the practical intellect, not of the speculative: because it does not halt in contemplation, but directs to the execution of the work. It differs from synderesis in this, that synderesis consists in those first dictates implanted, as it were, by nature, by which we judge: good is to be done, evil to be shunned; what thou wouldst not have done to thyself, do not to another; and other like principles of this kind. Wherefore conscience is not a habit, nor a power, but an act — not of the will, as Durandus contends, but of the practical intellect, as has been said.

II. Question II. Of how many kinds is conscience? Answer. One is antecedent, which directs the operation; the other consequent, which rejoices over a good work, and is distressed over an evil one. Again, one commands, another counsels: the former prescribes the operation by way of precept, the latter by way of counsel. Furthermore, on the part of the object it is divided into true — that is, right and good — and into false — that is, evil and not right. On the part of the assent it is distributed into certain, probable, doubting, scrupulous, and erroneous.

III. Question III. Does he sin who does not follow a right conscience? Answer. Conscience is called right by relation to a right rule. The rule of operation is twofold: one remote, which is the eternal law; the other proximate, which is the reason of the practical intellect. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 19, art. 5 — to whom the theologians commonly subscribe — teaches that he sins who resists a conscience proposing something as commanded under precept. This is perspicuously established from holy Scripture: All that is not of faith (that is, of conscience) is sin: Romans 14. If conscience proposes anything as prohibited under mortal sin, he sins mortally who resists it; the sin will be venial, if what conscience proposes as venial is venial. It is disputed whether he sins mortally who resists a conscience proposing something as sin without determining the gravity of the sin. Dismissing petty distinctions, I say that he sins gravely who acts against such a conscience. The reason is evident. He who with deliberate mind exposes himself to a manifest danger of sinning mortally, sins mortally, as Scripture itself testifies: He that loveth danger shall perish in it. To this danger he exposes himself who acts against the aforesaid conscience; since in that malice proposed absolutely there is contained equally a grave malice and a light one. Therefore, unless the gravity or lightness of the malice be first ascertained with due diligence, there is a grave danger of offending mortally.

IV. Question IV. Is a man bound to follow his own conscience, whether right or erring? Answer. All affirm it. For the same reason which proves the duty of following a right conscience proves also that no one can act against an erring conscience. For an erring conscience, just as much as a right conscience, proposes what is to be done as commanded by the divine Law. Both prescribe that the divine Law must be obeyed. On this matter read St. Thomas, I-II, q. 19, art. 5, ad 2. In an erroneous conscience a twofold judgment must be distinguished: one by which it is judged that something is prohibited by God which is not prohibited; the other by which it is judged that the divine Law must be obeyed. The first is false; the second is true.

V. Question V. Does he sin who does not act according to a vincibly erroneous conscience? Answer. Conscience can be erroneous in two ways. 1. Invincibly, when the error, all diligence having been applied, cannot be overcome; and in this case the conscience is without fault. 2. Vincibly, when the error, diligence being applied, can be overcome. Both these consciences oblige, with this difference: that the vincible conscience can and ought to be laid aside, whereas the invincible cannot be laid aside. Now these two things — namely, the duty of laying aside a vincibly erroneous conscience, and the obligation of following it — are by no means repugnant to one another, because they flow from diverse principles. The first arises from the principle of applying the diligence necessary for finding the truth and expelling the error; the second — namely, the duty of following the erroneous conscience — arises from the dictate of that very conscience, whereby the obligation of obeying the divine Law is proposed. Read St. Thomas, question 17 On Truth, article 4.

VI. Question VI. How should he conduct himself who, from an erroneous conscience, judges both extremes of a contradiction to be sin? Answer. If the erroneous conscience be vincible, it must be laid aside. Unless you lay it aside, you sin, whether you follow it or contradict it, as St. Thomas teaches, question 17 On Truth, article 4, ad 8: Just as in syllogistic matters, one absurdity being granted, others necessarily follow; so in moral matters, one absurdity being posited, others follow of necessity. Thus, supposing that a man seeks vainglory, whether for the sake of vainglory he does what he is bound to do, or omits it, he will always sin; and yet he is not perplexed, because he can dismiss his evil intention. And similarly, supposing an error of reason or of conscience which proceeds from an ignorance that does not excuse, it is necessary that evil in the will should follow; and yet the man is not perplexed, because he can withdraw from the error, since the ignorance is vincible and voluntary.

VII. What if the erroneous conscience be invincible, and judge both parts of a contradiction to be sin? This hypothesis I count scarcely probable. But granting it, no sin is committed, because there is no sin without liberty; invincible ignorance takes away liberty; therefore, the supposition being made that the conscience is invincibly erroneous, it cannot be said that the man sins, whichever part he follows. The Adversaries object that even in this hypothesis the man is free to omit or to perform his act. He is free with physical liberty, but not with moral liberty. But for sin, since it is in the genus of morals, moral liberty is necessary — which all Catholics, against Jansenius, confess to be taken away by invincible ignorance. A pastor assisting his flock on a feast day invincibly reckons that he sins if he omits Mass, and that he likewise sins if he abandons his flock to the incursions of wolves. This man is not morally free; therefore, whichever extreme he chooses, he will not sin. Though he is physically free to choose either of these two extremes, he is nevertheless not morally free: because he is not free to avoid acting against conscience, since in each extreme he apprehends sin.

VIII. Authors are wont to dispute whether it is graver to act against a vincibly erroneous conscience, or to follow it. But no certain rule can be assigned. Sometimes it is graver to follow it; sometimes it is less grave to act against it. Absolutely speaking, however, it is graver to act against it: since he who acts against it sins knowingly; he who follows it sins from ignorance; and ignorance, even though vincible, diminishes the malice of the sin. He who, shut up in prison, has the erroneous conscience that he sins mortally unless he hear Mass, according to the common opinion does not sin, for want of liberty: since that erroneous dictate is not the cause of the omission.

IX. Question VII. How is an erroneous conscience to be laid aside, and what diligence is to be applied? Answer. If the erroneous conscience has been formed rashly and imprudently, then it can be laid aside at will; and it suffices to advert to the falsity of the erroneous judgment, and to lay it aside by forming a contrary judgment upon the honesty of the operation. If, on the contrary, the conscience has been formed from a probable reason, then a contrary and more probable reason is necessary, to conquer the prior false persuasion. Ordinary diligence — not extraordinary — is necessary for laying aside a vincibly erring conscience. The former uses the accustomed means, namely study, counsel, prayers, pious works, by which the necessary light is implored of God. The latter applies extraordinary means: for instance, after taking the counsel of the Doctors of his own city, a man proceeds to other provinces to consult more learned men. The diligence to be applied must be gathered from the magnitude and diversity of the affairs. In unusual affairs, and those of extreme and highest moment, an unusual, exact, and utmost diligence must likewise be applied; on the contrary, in ordinary affairs there suffices the ordinary diligence which prudent and diligent upright men are wont to use. The extremes to be avoided are negligence and extraordinary diligence — for this latter fills the soul with scruples, anxiety, and disturbance. The omission of that ordinary and exact diligence which upright and vigilant men are wont to apply is, in affairs of grave moment, a grave sin.

X. Question VIII. From what indications can it be gathered that an erring conscience is vincible, or invincible? Answer. You can prudently presume the ignorance to be invincible: 1. If the thing ignored be of human, or of positive, law. 2. If the matter be most difficult even among the Learned themselves. 3. If no scruple, doubt, or any confused notion whatever has preceded. 4. If the man, on perceiving that he was deceived and violated the Law from ignorance, grieves and is saddened. 5. If the man be upright, and of an entire and well-ordered conscience. 6. If he has not been prejudiced by a false system and a depraved manner of opining. From these and similar circumstances and signs the Confessor can gather that the ignorance or inadvertence was invincible. The contrary holds if the matter be of the natural law; if some doubt has preceded; if the man be accustomed to offend, and be of a conscience entangled in crimes; if he be facile in adopting opinions which favor liberty and the appetites. For the rest, this ascertainment is difficult: therefore God must be prayed to with the Prophet David: Remember not my ignorances.

To Titius, who applies himself to the study of moral theology, theologians seem to speak with little consistency about the obligation of following conscience and the obligation of submitting one’s own judgment to the judgment of the Church. For they say that conscience is the voice of God, the herald of God, and that a man is bound to follow conscience whether it is right or erroneous. Indeed, Cardinal Newman has these words: “That divine authority, the voice of conscience, on which in truth the Church herself is built. . . . Did the Pope speak against conscience he would commit a suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground from under his feet.”¹ Hence a certain modernist says: “When authority is dumb or stultifies itself, private conviction resumes its previous rights and liberties. It sent us to authority in the first instance, not by a suicidal self-contradictory act; but in basing our trust upon reasons and sentiments it thereby assigned a limit to that trust which is reached as soon as authority would seem to violate those reasons or sentiments.”² And another writer says: “To our own mental and moral conscience all doctrines and laws must make their last appeal, and we have a distinct as well as a corporate personality.”¹ But, if this doctrine is admitted, Titius does not see what is to be condemned in the Protestant theory of private judgment. Hence it is asked:

1 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 60.

2 G. Tyrrell, A Much-abused Letter, p. 57. This was a fundamental point in the late Fr. Tyrrell’s teaching. He developed that teaching more fully in the last essay published in his book entitled Through Scylla and Charybdis. The following extracts are taken from that essay.

1 M. D. Petre, Catholicism and Independence, p. xi.

1. What is a norm of morality, and what is the norm of morality?

“We have long since not merely resigned ourselves to a silent and a hidden God, but have come to recognize our seeming loss as a priceless gain. For now we have learned to seek Him where alone He is to be found, and seen, and heard; near and not far; within and not without; in the very heart of His creation, in the center of man’s spirit; in the life of each; still more in the life of all. It is from the Sinai of Conscience (individual and collective) that He thunders forth His commandments and judgments; it is from the heights of His holiness that He looks down in pity upon our earthliness and sinfulness; it is in His Christ, in His saints and prophets, that He becomes incarnate and manifest, and that He tabernacles with the children of men.”

“Thus it is in the widest, the most enduring, the most independent consensus that we possess the fullest available manifestation of that divine spirit, partially and imperfectly manifested in our own individual mind and conscience—the spirit of Truth and Righteousness, the source of all moral power and authority—God revealed in man. Authority, then, is not an external influence streaming down from heaven like a sunbeam through a cleft in the clouds and with a finger of light singling out God’s arbitrarily chosen delegates from the multitude, over and apart from which they are to stand as His vicegerents. Authority is something inherent in, and inalienable from, that multitude itself; it is the moral coerciveness of the Divine Spirit of Truth and Righteousness immanent in the whole, dominant over its several parts and members; it is the imperativeness of the collective conscience.”

In an article contributed to the Hibbert Journal, January 1910, Baron F. von Hügel wrote concerning this doctrine of Fr. Tyrrell: “In substance he [Fr. Tyrrell] was maintaining, as to the Popes’ powers, nothing but what Cardinal Bellarmine, the greatest of the anti-Protestant theologians, and what Cardinal Newman, so emphatically a lover of authority, teach concerning conscience and the Pope—the latter in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk—backed by countless theologians, saints, and councils.”

2. Can a conflict arise between conscience and an infallible judgment of the Church?

3. In the case of a real conflict between conscience and the Pope, which would have to be obeyed?

4. What is to be said concerning the difficulty of Titius?

1. What is the norm of morality ?

Because we are free we can choose whether we will do good or evil. We ought to do good, but how are we to know what is good? There should be some rule or norm which tells us what is good and what is evil. Catholic theologians agree that the proximate and subjective norm of morality is conscience, or a practical judgment of the reason which tells us that such a particular action must or may be done or omitted. Conscience applies the objective norm of morality which is law, and all law is based on the eternal law of God, which bids us observe right order and forbids us to violate it.

2. Can a conflict arise between conscience and an infallible decision of the Church?

No, this is not possible. For an infallible decision of the Church has for its subject-matter some truth of the faith or some rule of morality, whereas conscience is only concerned with the application of general rules to a particular action which I am contemplating here and now. The field of infallible decisions and that of conscience are different, and they can no more come into collision with each other than can two trains on different lines. It is true that conscience may conflict with a particular command of a Pope, but the Pope is not infallible when he gives a particular command.

3. In case of a conflict between the Pope and conscience, which must be obeyed?

All Catholic theologians agree that in case of a real conflict when a certain conscience tells me that what a superior commands is wrong, I must obey conscience and disobey the superior, whoever he may be.¹ Of course before disobeying the command of a lawful superior in such a case I must make sure of my ground. I must use all available sources of information so that I may be sure that my conscience is right and not erroneous. If this is done, conflicts between the Pope and the individual conscience will very seldom occur.

1 St. Thomas, De Veritate, q. 17, a. 5.

4. What is to be said about the difficulty of Titius?

From what has already been said it will be clear that theologians by no means contradict themselves when they teach that conscience is the voice of God and that it must be obeyed as such, and at the same time insist on the duty of submitting one’s own judgment to the authority of the Church. Conscience is indeed private judgment, but its sphere is not that of ecclesiastical decisions. Private judgment is supreme when it tells me that this particular action must be done or not done. On the other hand the Pope is supreme for Catholics when he teaches from the chair that some doctrine belongs to Catholic faith or practice. Conscience says nothing about the truth or falsehood of such propositions as constitute the sphere of infallible decisions; it is restricted to questions whether this particular action which I am contemplating is to be done or not, and with this the Pope’s infallible authority can not conflict. What Cardinal Newman said is true; if the Pope spoke against conscience, he would speak against God, from whom all his authority is derived, and thus he would cut the ground from under his feet. The modernist doctrine is pure Protestantism, inasmuch as it asserts that private judgment is the final court of appeal in matters of Catholic faith and practice, and not the Church. It is plain that the authority of Cardinal Newman can not be invoked for this Protestant theory.

1. It is an axiom of the schools, that whatever is received, is received according to the manner of the recipient. We have spoken of the law that governs the world, as that law has existed from eternity in the mind of God. We have now to consider that law as it is received in creatures, and becomes the inward determinant of their action. Action is either necessary or free. The great multitude of creatures are wholly necessary agents. Even in free agents, most of what is in them, and much that proceeds from them, is of necessity, and beyond the control of their will. Of necessary action, whether material or mental, we shall have nothing further to say. It is governed by the Eternal Law, but it is not matter of moral philosophy. Henceforth we have to do with that law, only as it is received in free agents, as such, to be the rule of their conduct. The agents being free, the law must be received in a manner consonant with their freedom. It is proper to a free and rational being to guide itself, not to be dragged or pushed, but to go its own way, yet not arbitrarily, but according to law. The law for such a creature must be, not a physical determinant of its action, but a law operating in the manner of a motive to the will, obliging and binding, yet not constraining it: a law written in the intellect after the manner of knowledge: a law within the mind and consciousness of the creature, whereby it shall measure and regulate its own behaviour. This is the natural law of conscience. It is the Eternal Law, as made known to the rational creature, whereby to measure its own free acts. The Eternal Law is in the Mind of God: the Natural Law in the minds of men and angels. The Eternal Law adjusts all the operations of creatures: the Natural Law, only the free acts of intellectual creatures. And yet, for binding force, the Natural Law is one with the Eternal Law. On a summer evening one observes the sunset on the west coast; the heavens are all aglow with the sun shining there, and the waters are aglow too, reflecting the sun's rays. The Eternal Law is as the sun there in the heavens, the Natural Law is like the reflection in the sea. But it is one light.

2. It is called the Natural Law, first, because it is found, more or less perfectly expressed, in all rational beings: now whatever is found in all the individuals of a kind, is taken to belong to the specific nature, or type of that kind. Again it is called the Natural Law, because it is a thing which any rational nature must necessarily compass and contain within itself in order to arrive at its own proper perfection and maturity. Thus this inner law is natural, in the sense in which walking, speech, civilization are natural to man. A man who has it not, is below the standard of his species. It will be seen that dancing, singing—at least to a pitch of professional excellence—and a knowledge of Greek, are not, in this sense, natural. The Natural Law is not natural, in the sense of "coming natural," as provincial people say, or coming to be in man quite irrespectively of training and education, as comes the power of breathing. It was absurd of Paley (Mor. Phil., bk. i., c. v.) to look to the wild boy of Hanover, who had grown up in the woods by himself, to display in his person either the Natural Law or any other attribute proper to a rational creature.

3. We call this the natural law of conscience, because every individual's conscience applies this law, as he understands it, to his own particular human acts, and judges of their morality accordingly. What then is conscience? It is not a faculty, not a habit, it is an act. It is a practical judgment of the understanding. It is virtually the conclusion of a syllogism, the major premiss of which would be some general principle of command or counsel in moral matters; the minor, a statement of fact bringing some particular case of your own conduct under that law; and the conclusion, which is conscience, a decision of the case for yourself according to that principle: e.g., "There is no obligation of going to church on (what Catholics call) a day of devotion: this day I am now living is only a day of devotion; therefore I am not bound to go to church to-day." Such is the train of thought, not always so explicitly and formally developed, that passes through the mind, when conscience works. It is important to remember that conscience is an act of intellect, a judgment, not on a matter of general principle, not about other people's conduct, but about my own action in some particular case, and the amount of moral praise or blame that I deserve, or should deserve, for it. As regards action already done, or not done, conscience testifies, accusing or excusing. As regards action contemplated, conscience restrains or prompts, in the way of either obligation or counsel.

4. Conscience is not infallible: it may err, like any other human judgment. A man may be blind, if not exactly to his own action, at least to the motives and circumstances of his action. He may have got hold of a wrong general principle of conduct. He may be in error as to the application of his principle to the actual facts. In all these ways, what we may call the conscientious syllogism may be at fault, like any other syllogism. It may be a bad syllogism, either in logical form, or in the matter of fact asserted in the premisses. This is an erroneous conscience. But, for action contemplated, even an erroneous conscience is an authoritative decision. If it points to an obligation, however mistakenly, we are bound either to act upon the judgment or get it reversed. We must not contradict our own reason: such contradiction is moral evil, (c. v., s. iii., n. 3, p. 74.) If conscience by mistake sets us free of what is objectively our bounden duty, we are not there and then bound to that duty: but we may be bound at once to get that verdict of conscience overhauled and reconsidered. Conscience in this case has proceeded in ignorance, which ignorance will be either vincible or invincible, and must be treated according to the rules provided in the matter of ignorance, (c. iii., s. i., nn. 3-5, p. 27). An obligation, neglected in invincible ignorance, makes a merely material sin. (c. iii., s. ii., n. 7, p. 33.)

5. There is another element of mind, often confounded under one name with conscience, but distinct from it, as a habit from an act, and as principles from their application. This element the schoolmen called synderesis.¹⁰

Synderesis is an habitual hold upon primary moral judgments, as, that we must do good, avoid evil, requite benefactors, honour superiors, punish evil-doers. There is a hot controversy as to how these primary moral judgments arise in the mind. The coals of dispute are kindled by the assumption, that these moral judgments must needs have a totally other origin and birth in the mind than speculative first principles, as, that the whole is greater than the part, that two and two are four, that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. The assumption is specious, but unfounded. It looks plausible because of this difference, that moral judgments have emotions to wait upon them, speculative judgments have not. Speculative judgments pass like the philosophers that write them down, unheeded in the quiet of their studies. But moral judgments are rulers of the commonwealth: they are risen to as they go by, with majesty preceding and cares coming after. Their presence awakens in us certain emotions, conflicts of passion, as we think of the good that we should do, but have not done, or of the evil that goes unremedied and unatoned for. Commonly a man cannot contemplate his duty, a difficult or an unfulfilled duty especially, without a certain emotion, very otherwise than as he views the axioms of mathematics. There is a great difference emotionally, but intellectually the two sets of principles, speculative and moral, are held alike as necessary truths, truths that not only are, but must be, and cannot be otherwise: truths in which the predicate of the proposition that states them is contained under the subject. Such are called self-evident propositions; and the truths that they express, necessary truths. The enquiry into the origin of our primary moral judgments is thus merged in the question, how we attain to necessary truth. ¹⁰ On the derivation of this word, whether from [Greek: synedaesis] or [Greek: syntaeresis], see Athenæum, 1877, vol. i., pp. 738, 798, vol. iii. pp. 16, 48.

6. The question belongs to Psychology, not to Ethics: but we will treat it briefly for ethical purposes. And first for a clear notion of the kind of judgments that we are investigating.

"The primary precepts of the law of nature stand to the practical reason as the first principles of scientific demonstration do to the speculative reason: for both sets of principles are self-evident. A thing is said to be self-evident in two ways, either in itself, or _in reference to us. In itself every proposition, the predicate of which can be got from consideration of the subject is said to be self-evident. But it happens that to one who is ignorant of the definition of the subject, such a proposition will not be self-evident: as this proposition, Man is a rational being, is self-evident in its own nature, because to name man is to name something rational; and yet, to one ignorant what man is, this proposition is not self-evident. And hence it is that, as Boethius says: "there are some axioms self-evident to all alike." Of this nature are all those propositions whose terms are known to all, as, Every whole is greater than its part; and, Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Some propositions again are self-evident only to the wise, who understand the meaning of the terms: as, to one who understands that an angel is not a body, it is self-evident that an angel is not in a place by way of circumscription;¹¹ which is not manifest to others, who do not understand the term." (St. Thos., 1a 2æ q. 94, art. 2, in corp.)

One more extract. "From the very nature of an intellectual soul it is proper to man that, as soon as he knows what a whole is, and what a part is, he knows that every whole is greater than its part; and so of the rest. But what is a whole, and what a part, that he cannot know except through sensory impressions. And therefore Aristotle shows that the knowledge of principles comes to us through the senses." (St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 51, art. 1, in corp.) ¹¹ Circumscriptive, which word is explained by St. Thos., 1a, q. 52. art. 1.

7. Thus the propositions that right is to be done, benefactors to be requited, are self-evident, necessary truths, to any child who has learned by experience the meaning of right, of kindness, and of a return of kindness. "Yes, but"—some one will say—"how ever does he get to know what right and wrong are? Surely sensory experience cannot teach him that." We answer, man's thoughts begin in sense, and are perfected by reflection. Let us take the idea of wrong, the key to all other elementary moral ideas. The steps by which a child comes to the fulness of the idea of wrong may be these. First, the thing is forbidden: then one gets punished for it. Punishment and prohibition enter in by eye and ear and other senses besides. Then the thing is offensive to those we love and revere. Then it is bad for us. Then it is shameful, shabby, unfair, unkind, selfish, hateful to God. All these points of the idea of wrong are grasped by the intellect, beginning with sensory presentations of what is seen and felt and heard said. Again with the idea of ought. This idea is sometimes said to defy analysis. But we have gone about (c. vi.) to analyse it into two elements, nature requiring, nature's King commanding. The idea of wrong we analysed into a breach of this natural requirement, and this Divine command or law. Primary moral ideas, then, yield to intellectual analysis. They are of this style: to be done, as I wish to be rational and please God: not to be done, unless I wish to spoil myself and disobey my Maker. But primary moral ideas, compared together, make primary moral judgments. Primary moral judgments, therefore, arise in the intellect, by the same process as other beliefs arise there in matters of necessary truth.

8. Thus, applying the principle known as Occham's razor, that "entities are not to be multiplied without reason," we refuse to acknowledge any Moral Sense, distinct from Intellect. We know of no peculiar faculty, specially made to receive "ideas, pleasures and pains in the moral order." (Mackintosh, Ethics, p. 206.) Most of all, we emphatically protest against any blind power being accredited as the organ of morality. We cannot accept for our theory of morals, that everything is right which warms the breast with a glow of enthusiasm, and all those actions wrong, at which emotional people are prone to cry out, dreadful, shocking. We cannot accept emotions for arbitrators, where it most concerns reasonable beings to have what the Apostle calls "enlightened eyes of the heart" (Ephes. i. 18), that we may "know to refuse the evil and to choose the good." (Isaias vii. 15.) A judge may have his emotions, but his charge to the jury must be dictated, not by his heart, but by his knowledge of the law. And the voice of conscience, whatever feelings it may stir, must be an intellectual utterance, and, to be worth anything in a case of difficulty, a reasoned conclusion, based on observation of facts, and application of principles, and consultation with moral theologians and casuists. A subjective and emotional standard of right and wrong is as treacherous and untrustworthy as the emotional justification of those good people, who come of a sudden to "feel converted."

9. It would be unnecessary, except for the wrong-headedness of philosophers, to observe that conscience requires educating. As moral virtue is a habit of appetite, rational or irrational, a formation resulting from frequent acts; and as the child needs to be aided and assisted from without towards the performance of such acts, in order to overcome the frequent resistance of appetite to reason (c. v., s. ii., n. 4, p. 71): so the springs of conscience are certain intellectual habits, whereby the subject is cognisant of the principles of natural law, and of their bearing on his own conduct, habits which, like the habits of moral virtue, require to be formed by acts from within and succour from without, since merely the rudiments of the habit are supplied by nature. Even the first principles of morality want formulating and pointing out to children, like the axioms of geometry. The mother tells her little one: "Ernest, or Frank, be a good boy:" while the schoolmaster explains to Master Ernest that two straight lines cannot possibly enclose a space. There is something in the boy's mind that goes along with and bears out both the teaching of his master and his mother's exhortation: something that says within him: "To be sure, those lines can't enclose a space:" "Certainly, I ought to be good." It is not merely on authority that he accepts these propositions. His own understanding welcomes and approves them: so much so, that once he has understood them, he would not believe the contrary for being told it. You would not persuade a child that it was right to pull mother's hair; or that half an orange was literally, as Hesiod says, "more than the whole." He would answer that it could not be, that he knew better.

10. On one ground there is greater need of education for the conscience than for any other intellectual formation: that is because of the power of evil to fascinate and blind on practical issues of duty. Cicero well puts it:

"We are amazed and perplexed by variety of opinions and strife of authorities; and because there is not the same divergence upon matters of sense, we fancy that the senses afford natural certainty, while, for moral matters, because some men take one view, some another, and the same men different views at different times, we consider that any settlement that can be arrived at is merely conventional, which is a huge mistake. The fact is, there is no parent, nor nurse, nor schoolmaster, nor poet, nor stage play, to corrupt the judgments of sense, nor consent of the multitude to wrench them away from the truth. It is for minds and consciences that all the snares are set, as well by the agency of those whom I have just mentioned, who take us in our tender and inexperienced age, and ingrain and fashion us as they will, as also by that counterfeit presentment of good, which lurks in the folds of every sense, the mother of all evil, pleasure, under whose seductive blandishments men fail to recognise the moral good that nature offers, because it is unaccompanied by this itching desire and satisfaction." (Cicero, De Legibus, i, 17.)

Readings.—St. Thos., 1a, q. 79, art. 11-13; Plato, Protagoras, 325, 326; John Grote, Examination of Utilitarian Philosophy, pp. 169, 207, 208; Cardinal Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. l02-112.

1. The following narrative is taken from Grote's History of Greece, c. 81.:

"It was a proud day for the Carthaginian general¹² when he stood as master on the ground of Himera; enabled to fulfil the duty, and satisfy the exigencies, of revenge for his slain grandfather. Tragical indeed was the consummation of this long-cherished purpose…. All the male captives, 3,000 in number, were conveyed to the precise spot where Hamilkar had been slain, and there put to death with indignity, as an expiatory satisfaction to his lost honour. No man can read the account of this wholesale massacre without horror and repugnance. Yet we cannot doubt, that among all the acts of Hannibal's life, this was the one in which he most gloried; that it realized in the most complete and emphatic manner, his concurrent aspirations of filial sentiment, religious obligation, and honour as a patriot;¹³ that to show mercy would have been regarded as a mean dereliction of these esteemed impulses…. Doubtless, the feelings of Hannibal were cordially shared, and the plenitude of his revenge envied, by the army around him. So different, sometimes so totally contrary, is the tone and direction of the moral sentiments, among different ages and nations."

We may supplement this story by another from Herodotus (iii., 38):

"Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked, 'What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died.' To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks were standing by, and knew by the aid of an interpreter all that was said—'What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers, at their decease?' The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language. Such is the way of men; and Pindar was right in my judgment, when he said, 'Convention is king over all.'" ¹² Hannibal, B.C. 409, therefore not the victor of Cannae. ¹³ Italics mine.

2. If any one held that the natural law of conscience was natural in the same way as the sense of temperature: if one held to the existence of a Moral Sense in all men, settling questions of right and wrong, as surely as all men know sweet things from bitter by tasting them: these stories, and they could be multiplied by hundreds, abundantly suffice to confute the error. There is no authentic copy of the moral law, printed, framed, and hung up by the hand of Nature, in the inner sanctuary of every human heart. Man has to learn his duties as he learns the principles of health, the laws of mechanics, the construction and navigation of vessels, the theorems of geometry, or any other art or science. And he is just as likely to go wrong, and has gone wrong as grievously, in his judgments on moral matters as on any other subject of human knowledge. The knowledge of duties is natural (as explained in the previous section, n. 2), not because it comes spontaneously, but because it is necessary to our nature for the development and perfection of the same. Thus a man ought, so far as he can, to learn his duties: but we cannot say of a man, as such, that he ought to learn geometry or navigation. If a man does not know his duties, he is excused by ignorance, according to the rules under which ignorance excuses (c. iii., s. i., nn. 3-5, p. 27). If a man does not know navigation, there is no question of excuse for what he was not bound to learn, but he may suffer loss by his want of knowledge.

3. It was furthermore observed above (l.c.), that the natural law was so called as being found expressed more or less perfectly in the minds of all men, and therefore being a proper element of human nature. It remains to see how much this universal natural expression amounts to. That is at once apparent from our previous explanation of synderesis. (s. i., nn. 5, seq., p. 139.) Not a complete and accurate knowledge of the natural law is found in all minds, far from it; but synderesis is found in all. This is apparent from Mr. Grote's own phrases, "aspirations of filial sentiment," "religious obligation," "honour as a patriot," Parents are to be honoured, we must do our duty to God and to our country: there Hannibal was at one with the most approved teachers of morality. Callatian and Greek agreed in the recognition of the commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother. That was the major premiss of them both, in the moral syllogism (s. i., n. 3, p. 135), which ruled their respective consciences. Their difference was upon the applying minor, as it is called; the Greek regarding the dissolution of the body into its elements by fire, and so saving it from corruption, as the best means of honouring the dead: the Callatians preferring to raise their parents as it were to life again, by making them the food of their living children. Hannibal, again, had before his mind the grand principle of retribution, that wrongdoing must be expiated by suffering. But he had not heard the words "Vengeance is Mine;" and mistakenly supposed it to rest with himself to appoint and carry out his own measure of revenge. Whether he was quite so invincibly ignorant on this point, as Grote represents, is open to doubt. At any rate he was correct in the primary moral judgment on which he proceeded.

Reading.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 94, art. 6.

95. Conscience is the human intellect applying the general principles of morals to individual acts. The term, as employed in Moral Philosophy, means not an examination into one's past deeds, but a judgment on acts about to be performed. In judging whether an individual act is morally good or evil, the intellect forms, explicitly or implicitly, a syllogism, the major of which is a known principle of morality, the minor a particular fact, and the conclusion a practical judgment, which is called a dictate of conscience. For instance, — a lie is never allowed; but to say that I have never sinned would be a lie; therefore, I am not allowed to say that I have never sinned. Conscience, then, may be defined as a practical judgment formed by reasoning from a universal principle to a particular fact, whereby I decide whether a certain individual act ought to be done or omitted, or whether it may be done or omitted, at my choice.