An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
WILL AND CONSCIENCE.
§ 1. The Self as Purposive and Regulative. This chapter has been entitled "Will and Conscience," but we must begin by pointing out that will and conscience must not be regarded as separate faculties and powers. We often speak as if "will" and "conscience" were separate faculties with an existence and activity of their own apart from the self. "My conscience pricked me when I told that lie." "His will was too weak to prevent him yielding to the temptation to gamble." Thus we commonly distinguish the will and the conscience from the self, and we attribute to them an independent existence and independent activity. But this is quite wrong.
In reality, "will" and "conscience" are simply names which are given to certain aspects of the one self which is present in all mental behaviour and all moral conduct. We may consider the one self in different aspects and from various standpoints. We may consider it, in the first place, as purposive, as conative, as active. This is the self regarded as will. Or we may think of it as regulative, as reflective, as judicial. This is the self regarded as conscience. But though these aspects differ, they are aspects of the one self. Suppose a man has an impulse to tell a "white lie," and suppose that he succeeds in restraining it. We may say that his conscience told him that the impulse was wrong, and his will prevented it issuing in action. But what has really happened is that he has brought the impulse into relation to his self as a whole. His self as reflective and judicial judges that the impulse is wrong, and his self as conative and active restrains it. In the former aspect the self functions as conscience, in the latter as will. But in both cases it is one and the same self.
We have already seen that the self sometimes seems divided against itself. A lower self may conflict with a higher. The business self may be discordant with the religious self. Now, in all cases of moral conflict between these different selves, the highest and best self is identified with will and conscience. This is the self which we like to regard as the true self. Thus, when we say, "My conscience pricked me when I told that lie," we would excuse ourselves by explaining, "I was not quite myself when I did it." The self which told the lie is not considered to be the true self. The conscience that pricked is the real self. Similarly, when we say, "His will was too weak to restrain him from gambling," we might apologise for him on the same grounds, "He was not quite himself when the sudden temptation came to him." His will is identified with his real self. But at the time his real self or will was not strong enough to overcome the sudden temptation. In every case where we commonly distinguish between will and conscience and the self, will and conscience are identified with the true self. By "will" and "conscience," then, we understand the self as conative and as regulative. Having premised this, we may now proceed to examine in some detail the nature of will and conscience respectively.
§ 2. The Nature of Volition. Volition must be distinguished from desire and from wish. (1) In a former chapter we saw that desires frequently conflict, and that only one of the conflicting desires can issue in action. The desire that issues in action, if organised in the self as a whole and acknowledged as its desire, is willed. The other desire is rejected as being alien to the true self. The self acknowledges one desire as its own, it throws itself upon its side, it "backs" it, it undertakes as far as in it lies to secure the attainment of the end that is desired; and thus the desire becomes definitely willed. It is a volition, and the actions in which it results are voluntary. The self always accepts responsibility for its volitions. When an action is willed by me, it is my action, and I am willing to stand by it. But I may look upon some of my mere desires as foreign to my real self, and may even regard them with horror and loathing.
(2) Volition also differs from mere wish. The distinction cannot be stated better than it was by Aristotle in his Ethics. "Nor yet can will be the same as wish, though it is evidently near akin to it. There can be no willing of impossibilities, and, if a man were to say that he willed something impossible, he would be thought a fool. But we wish for impossibilities as well as possibilities. Again, we wish for things that could not possibly be performed by our agency, as, for instance, that a certain actor or a certain athlete should win the prize; but no one wills anything of that sort: we only will things that we think may possibly be effected by our agency. Further, wish is mainly directed to the end and will to the means; we wish to be in good health and we will the means of attaining good health. Or again, we wish to be happy, and we say so; but it is inappropriate to say that we will to be happy, for, to put it generally, will appears to be confined to things in our power."[1]
It is one of the conditions of moral progress that we should not allow desires and wishes to remain mere desires and mere wishes. They should be brought into relation to the self as a whole. The self should judge whether they are worthy to be identified with itself or not. If it decides that they are worthy, it should "back" the desires so that they become volitions; and, so far as the ends which it wishes are attainable, it should will the means by which they may be achieved. On the other hand, if desires are unworthy and wishes vain, they should at once be suppressed and denied. It is a source of weakness to the moral life to dally for a moment with desires which are evil or alien to the true self. And the weakest thing in the world is a life which is at the mercy of a swarm of impotent wishes. Like gnats, they goad it not to action but simply to irritation.
All volition involves deliberation on the one hand, and choice or decision on the other.
(1) It is always the self that deliberates. It asks, "Should I do this?" and "Should I do that?" In deliberation alternatives are brought before the self. These alternatives may simply be doing the action and leaving it undone. Or the alternatives may be conflicting desires. In the latter case the desires are brought into relation to the self as a whole, and the self deliberates which of the desires can most worthily be identified with itself. "The hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual drunkard under temptation. He has made a resolve to reform, but is now solicited again by the bottle. His moral triumph or failure literally consists in finding the right name for the case. If he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whisky he never met before, or a case of celebrating a public holiday, or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favour of abstinence than any he has ever yet made, then he is lost. His choice of the wrong name seals his doom. But if, in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name, and apperceives the case as that of 'being a drunkard, being a drunkard, being a drunkard,' his feet are planted on the road to salvation. He saves himself by thinking rightly."[2] Or, as Professor Stout puts it, "The thought of getting drunk attracts the man; but the thought of his getting drunk repels."[3] Thus, if we would deliberate well, we should always bring the possible courses of action into relation to the self as a whole. The question is not, "Do I desire this glass?" It is, "Do I desire myself as a person who has drunk this glass with all its consequences?"
(2) Eventually, however long the process of deliberation may last, one alternative is chosen. Henceforth this alternative becomes identified with the self. We have come to a decision, and we hold to it. "The most obvious difference between the state of indecision and that of decision is that in the first we do not know what we are going to do, and that in the second we do know what we are going to do. While deliberating, we are making up our mind, and we do not know what our mind is going to be. When we have formed a decision we have come to know our own minds. The conception of the self has become fixed where it was previously indeterminate. The realisation of one line of conative tendency is now definitely anticipated as part of our future life-history, so far at least as external conditions will allow of its execution."[4]
§3. The Training of the Will. It is of the utmost importance that the child should be trained to stand by his decisions. It is, indeed, often very much easier to maintain our decisions than to arrive at them. But it may on occasion be very difficult to remain true to our choice. More particularly is this the case when the decision was a noble one which involved self-sacrifice. The man who has chosen the straight and narrow path is often tempted to abandon it. "Tasks in hours of insight willed may be through hours of gloom fulfilled." But, in general, a decision once formed tends to maintain itself. Three reasons for this have been given by Professor Stout.
(1) "When I judge that in so far as in me lies I shall realise a certain end, the endeavour to realise that end becomes ipso facto an integral part of the conception of myself. Failure to realise it is regarded as my failure, my defeat. Thus volition becomes strengthened in the face of obstacles by all the combative emotions. These are of varying kinds and of varying degrees of strength in different individuals; but all tendencies to hold out or to struggle against opposition, merely because it is opposition, are enlisted in the service of the will, inasmuch as the idea of the line of conduct willed is an integral part of the idea of self."[5]
(2) "The fixity of the will is also strengthened, often in a very high degree, by aversion to the state of irresolution. Suspense is in itself disagreeable; and when we have emerged from it by a voluntary decision, we shrink from lapsing into it once more. Besides this, prolonged and repeated indecision is highly detrimental in the general conduct of life. The man Who knows his own mind is far more efficient than the man who is always wavering. Hence, in most persons there is a strong tendency to abide by a resolution, just because it is a resolution. This tendency is greatly strengthened by social relations. If we are weak and vacillating, no one will depend on us; we shall be viewed with a kind of contempt. Mere vanity may go far to give fixity to the will"[6]
(3) "Volition also becomes fixed by the action which follows on it. So soon as we have attained the settled belief that we are going to follow out a certain line of conduct, we immediately begin to adapt our thoughts and deeds to this belief. We thus come to be more and more committed to the course determined on. To withdraw from it would be to disturb our arrangements; to baulk expectations raised in others; and to arrest the general flow of our own mental activity. The more the mind has become set on one thing, the more it would be upset by being diverted to another."[7]
These three points are so important that they may be epitomised in three ethical maxims. (1) Immediately identify with your self the course of action decided upon. (2) Avoid relapsing into irresolution. (3) Translate your decision into action at the earliest possible moment.
§ 4. Some Educational Aspects. It follows from all this that there is eternal truth in such copy-book maxims as "Perseverance is a Virtue" and "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." The triteness of these hackneyed precepts often blinds us to their truth. Yet there is no moral lesson which the child needs to learn more than this. It is not natural for the child to persevere. Its purposes are short-lived, just as its desires are transient and its ideals partial. It very soon tires of trying to do what is unpleasant or uninteresting. And it is not without pain that it learns the lesson of perseverance. Organised games are one of the most useful educational means of teaching the child to persist in what he is doing. The boy knows that he must "stick in" and not "slack it," if he wants to get into the school team. On the playing-field he realises that perseverance is a virtue, and he ought then to be more ready to be persuaded to cultivate this virtue in relation to his school work. Here, indeed, perseverance is more difficult, because it is necessary to concentrate the attention on the uninteresting task. And the attention of the child, like the attention of most adults, is a very uncertain thing, which comes only by fits and starts. But the child can learn to form habits of concentrated attention. Such habits are formed only by perseverance in recalling the wandering mind to the subject in hand. Perseverance is entirely an affair of the will.
The exercise of will is not an easy thing. Most people whose time is largely at their own disposal know how readily they relapse into a state of aboulia, or simple incapacity to will. A man lies in bed on a summer morning, simply because he cannot get himself to will to rise. He knows he ought to be up. He knows that the morning is bright and warm. He knows he will be just as comfortable after his bath and breakfast as he is in bed. He may revolve all these thoughts in his mind. Yet he cannot will to rise. It is precisely because it is often so hard to will simple actions that it is so important to form good habits in accordance with which we shall act habitually without needing to will the action on every occasion. The man who forms the habit of rising at the same hour saves not only much time but much nervous strain. For it is a strain to know that one ought to do a thing, and yet feel unable to will it. And such an incapacity to will what we know we ought to do, if indulged in such a small affair as lying a-bed of a morning, is apt to appear in a very startling way when much graver matters are at stake.
Willed action is often "in the line of greatest resistance." We have to overcome obstacles to the attainment of some ideal end, and our inclination would lead us to turn aside from this difficult task and follow the line of least resistance. But we know that we ought to act in obedience to the ideal, however rough the path may be. Most willed action involves a struggle. There is a saying of the Greek sage Pittacus, which deserves to be inscribed in letters of gold in every schoolroom and in every home: "It is hard to be good."
It is "hard to be good" because—to mention one reason—it is often difficult to will to do what we ought to do. So far, we have been assuming that we know what we ought to do. But the difficulty of being good is sometimes due to our ignorance what really is the right thing to do. Now, it is the function of the self, acting as conscience, to tell us what is and what is not the right thing to do. We must therefore go on to ask what exactly we mean by conscience, and what is its place in the moral life.
§5. The Meaning of Conscience. There are two mistaken views of conscience, which are so commonly held, that it is impossible to pass them over in silence. Each of these theories has been maintained by eminent philosophers, and a line or two must be devoted to stating and criticising them.
The first view is that at which we glanced at the beginning of the chapter. The theory that conscience is a separate faculty of the mind was strongly defended by Bishop Butler, one of the most honoured names in the history of English Ethics. Butler says that conscience is a faculty of peculiar sanctity, in kind and nature supreme over all others. This faculty, which is purely rational, has absolute and unquestioned authority. It passes judgment both on the man and his actions. It pronounces without the possibility of error, and without the possibility of appeal, that some actions are in themselves right, just, and good, and that others are in themselves evil, wrong, and unjust. It is a "magisterial faculty," whose prerogative it is to judge and govern, with perfect impartiality and perfect authority.
Now, in answer to this, we must point out (a) that psychology has now established that there are no separate and distinct faculties of the mind, and therefore an isolated moral faculty or conscience is simply a fiction. (b) The peculiar "sanctity" of conscience comes, not from conscience itself, but from the kind of objects with which the self is concerned in making moral judgments. Moral judgments are made with regard to the good and duty, and it is these which have a special sanctity.
According to the other view, conscience is simply a group of instincts, or a collection of emotions, or an aggregate of sentiments—in short, a bundle of feelings. Conscience is of the heart, not of the head. It is simply the conglomeration of feelings which makes us feel good when we do right, and feel bad when we do wrong.[8]
In criticism of this view, we may urge (a) that feelings do not have the permanence that conscience possesses. Feelings are capricious and uncertain, varying from moment to moment. But conscience is constant and systematic, (b) Feelings are not reflective. Feelings give an immediate sense of value, but they cannot reflect on themselves or on anything else. But conscience is reflective. The fact that it often does not "prick" till after the action has been performed shows that its verdict is based on reflection.
But though both of these views as they stand are erroneous, they each contain an element of truth. (1) It is true that conscience is rational. Conscience is the self making moral judgments. And judgment is always rational. Conscience is often pictured as a kind of judge. It carries on judicial investigation, it accuses, it bears witness, and it passes sentence. In all these judicial operations the rational aspect of conscience is prominent. Conscience is simply intelligence occupied with a certain kind of subject-matter. Conscientious reflection is distinguished from reflection in general, not as a special kind of mental activity; but as dealing with a special class of objects. When intelligence deals with the relations of persons and moral actions, it is called conscience. Conscience is, indeed, simply consciousness dealing with moral life.
(2) But conscience also includes feeling. When conscience judges that such and such an action is wrong, we immediately feel that it is wrong. If my conscience judges that an action which I have committed is wrong, I immediately feel remorse. In addition to this, all moral judgments involve some emotional accompaniments. All moral judgments deal with moral conduct, and however impartial the judgment purports to be, it is always accompanied by the feelings natural to our attitude to the person or persons whose conduct is being judged. Our liking or dislike, our friendship or coolness, our love or hatred for a man will, however hard we try to exclude them, tinge the judgments we pass on his conduct.
Both reason and feeling are comprehended within the self. And conscience is the whole self, as reasoning and feeling, as estimating the rightness and wrongness of actions, in accordance with some moral standard, and with reference to some moral ideal, as sympathising with the various motives which influence it, and as weighing the consequences that will probably follow from its actions. Conscience is simply the moral aspect of personality or self-consciousness. The man's whole personality, when he engages in moral action or makes a moral judgment, is his conscience.
§ 6. Conflicts of Conscience. Conflicts may occur within the conscience itself. Conscience may not be harmonious. It may not be consistent in its judgments. The self is rarely developed equally completely on every side. So the conscience may often be unduly callous in one direction, and excessively sensitive in another. One man's conscience may be exceedingly punctilious in insisting on the exact letter of religious observance, though he may have no scruple whatever in engineering commercial enterprises of doubtful morality. Another man may be thoroughly dishonest in business, and yet be exemplary in his domestic relations. These are no doubt extreme instances; but we all know people whose consciences would repudiate indignantly a temptation to steal, and yet passively acquiesce in an attempt to defraud a railway company. Such inconsistencies in the judgments of the individual conscience indicate that the self has not been perfectly unified. If it were completely harmonised, its judgments would always be absolutely consistent.
Conflicts may also take place between the conscience of one man and the conscience of his neighbour, or between one man's conscience and the public or universal conscience. The law of the land may command certain actions which an individual regards as immoral, or a man's country may be engaged in a war which he believes unjust. Is he, in the first case, to obey the State and disobey his own conscience by performing the act that is enjoined? In the second, should he stifle the judgment of his conscience, and pay taxes to maintain the war or contribute his personal services to it? Is he to hearken to the voice of his private conscience or that of the State? In such a conflict a man should always suspect the rightness of the judgment of his private conscience. It is just possible that his conscience may be, in Buskin's phrase, "the conscience of an ass." Or he may be taking for the verdict of conscience what is simply an unexamined prejudice. A man has no right to a private conscience in any matter which he has not taken pains to understand. A man's first duty, then, is to examine the judgment of his conscience, and to make quite certain that he has acquired sufficient knowledge of the question at issue. But if he is satisfied, after full reflection on all the circumstances, that the verdict of his private conscience is right, then he must at all costs obey it.
§ 7. The Education of Conscience. The aim of the education of conscience is the removal of such conflicts as these. In an ideal condition of society each man's conscience would function always and everywhere consistently with itself, and harmoniously with the public or universal conscience. With a view to such an ideal as this, how is conscience to be educated?
(1) The individual conscience should be organised harmoniously. In other words, the self as a whole should be systematised in an all-round development, in which each aspect of the self is allowed an opportunity to grow. Thus it should be possible to do something to overcome the tendency of conscience to be slack in some directions, and excessively scrupulous in others. Here, as everywhere else, a harmonious moral life depends on the development of the self in accordance with a comprehensive and worthy moral ideal.
(2) Conscience must be enlightened. Ethics rests on the assumption that if all men had the same knowledge, their moral judgments would be in perfect agreement. Unless men have a certain stock of knowledge, reflection is either impossible or futile. In order that our moral judgments may be sound we must have knowledge.
(3) If men have adequate knowledge and form habits of reflecting before acting, their consciences will function before action instead of after. As it is, in the case of many men, the sting or prick of conscience comes too late: it is not felt till after the action has been done, and the only remedy then may be a vain remorse. Thus we often hear those who suddenly realise the sinfulness or wrongness of their conduct exclaim, "I never thought," "If I had only thought!" If conscience had pronounced the action wrong before it was done, it would probably never have been performed. Therefore let reflection precede action: "Look before you leap."
(4) Of course, there is a danger here. A man may look so long that he will never leap. But in such cases reflection has been indulged until it has become morbid. It has become an introspective inquisition of the depths of one's own moral life. And such self-examination is apt, in addition to weakening the springs of conduct, to turn men into canting prigs. But it is possible to avoid this result. There is such a thing as an honest conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is simply the formed habit of bringing conscience or intelligence to bear upon the actual moral situations in which we daily find ourselves. Hence the ethical and educational maxim: So train the child to refer his moral difficulties to the judgment of his conscience, that he will gradually come to develop a conscientious character, which will habitually judge of the moral worth of his thoughts and actions.
For further reading: (on Will) G. F. Stout: Manual, bk. iv., ch. x.; W. James: Talks to Teachers, ch. xv.; J. Burnet: Aristotle on Education, pp. 66-83; J. Dewey: Educational Essays, ch. ii.; (on Conscience) J. H. Muirhead: Elements of Ethics, §§ 31-35, 97-98; S. E. Mezes: Ethics, ch. vi.-viii.; Butler: Sermons, i. and ii.; A. E. Taylor: The Problem of Conduct, pp. 147-152.
- ↑ Aristotle: Ethics, iii. ii. §§ 7-9.
- ↑ James: Talks to Teachers, pp. 187-188.
- ↑ Stout: Manual of Psychology, p. 708.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 710
- ↑ Mind, N.S., vol. v. p. 358.
- ↑ Op. cit. p. 359.
- ↑ Manual of Psychology, p. 716.
- ↑ Varieties of this view have been maintained by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, and by Hume, Mill, and Leslie Stephen; and more recently by Prof. Westermarck (The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas) and Dr. M'Dougall (Social Psychology).