CHAPTER III
ON A DOUBTFUL CONSCIENCE
i. WHEN we have some knowledge of a matter which does not amount to a certainty, various states of mind may be distinguished with respect to the mind's inclination to form a judgement about the matter in question. If no reasons are known for either affirming or denying a proposition, or if there are as weighty reasons for one as for the other, the mind suspends judgement, and is said to be in doubt. Doubt, then, is the suspending of judgement about a matter apprehended by the mind. A doubtful conscience, therefore, will be a suspension of judgement about the lawfulness of some action.
If some slight reason draws the mind in one direction, we have then a suspicion about the matter. If there be a good solid reason or reasons for forming a judgement in a particular sense though there is not sufficient ground for certainty, and it is felt that the opposite may be true, the mind then forms an opinion on the matter. [1]
Theologians distinguish a negative from a positive doubt. There is negative doubt when the mind suspends judgement for want of reasons on one side or on the other; if there is an apparent equality of reasons on either side, the doubt is positive. In this chapter we confine our attention to negative doubt, the sense in which the term doubt is usually understood in theology. A speculative doubt has reference to some question in the abstract apart from present action, as when I doubt whether it is allowed to fish on Sundays, though I have no intention of actually fishing: a practical doubt has reference to the lawfulness of an action which there is question of performing here and now.
A doubt about law has reference to the law's existence or its interpretation; a doubt about fact has reference to fact.
2. It is not lawful to perform an action with a practically doubtful conscience as to whether the action is right or wrong. The reason is obvious; for, as we saw in the last chapter, we must have a certain conscience that the action is right before
- ↑ St Thomas, 2-2, q. 2, a. i.
