XVIII

THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE

NOTWITHSTANDING all that has been said and written on the rights of conscience, toleration, freedom of opinion, and other topics of the same kind, it still remains true that there is hardly any subject on which so much confusion exists, and on which it is more difficult to give a completely satisfactory answer to the various difficulties which may be suggested. The popular version of the theory of the rights of conscience is not very unlike that which was imputed to Liberals in general by Dr. Newman, in the latest of his publications. He gives the following proposition as one of the Liberal dogmas to which he specially objected: There are rights of conscience, such as that every one may lawfully advance a claim to profess and teach what is false and wrong in matters religious, social, and moral, provided that to his private conscience it seems absolutely true and right.' And he gives, as a legitimate inference from this, the proposition-Therefore individuals have a right to preach and practise fornication and polygamy.'

We made some observations on this, amongst other statements of Dr. Newman's on Liberalism in general, but the subject is not one to be dismissed in the few lines which were all that we could then afford to it. It well deserves a fuller discussion, and it is impossible to do justice to it, without drawing such an outline of the relation to each other of the main questions of moral philosophy, as will show the place which we should be disposed to allot to conscience, and the general conception which we have formed of its rights.

The general problem of all moral philosophy is to give a true theory of the rules by which human conduct ought (whatever that may mean) to be regulated. It will be found on examination to be summed up in three principal questions: What is the meaning of right and wrong? Why should a man do right, and not wrong? How are men in general, or given men in particular, to know what is right and what is wrong? A complete answer to these three questions would constitute a complete system of moral philosophy. In one sense, each of the three questions is independent of the other two, but their natural order is that in which they are arranged above, and it is difficult to answer satisfactorily the question as to the rights of conscience, without giving more or less of an answer to all three.

The first question then is, what is meant by right and wrong, which, it is to be observed, are both substantives and adjectives? The answer is that

right and wrong, the adjectives, are words denoting the agreement or divergence of an action from any rule with which the action is compared. Right, the substantive, means a faculty or power secured to any person by any rule; and a wrong means an act done in violation of a right. Thus, the words right and wrong, whether used as adjectives or as substantives, are emphatically relative words, and convey no information at all unless we know what is the quality of the rule according to which a given action is said to be right or wrong, or a given power is secured. The only definite quality which has ever been suggested as a possible test for moral rules is their tendency to produce the happiness of mankind at large; and after all the words which have been heaped up upon the subject, and all the books which have been written upon it, no one has been able either to deny that there is a connection between virtue and vice on the one hand, and happiness and misery on the other, or to show that right and wrong, in the emphatic sense, mean anything else than the conformity or otherwise. of an action with rules so framed as to produce a maximum of happiness.

This question, indeed, though it lies at the bottom of the whole subject, and though its true character and position are not unfrequently overlooked, does not, in fact, occasion much difficulty. The great difficulty lies in answering the other two questions. How are particular people to know what course of conduct is prescribed by rules so framed as to produce

a maximum of happiness, and why, when they do know it, should they act accordingly?

To the question, how you are to know what is right in the sense explained, there are two principal answers. First, it is said, the knowledge may be got as other knowledge is got-namely, by experience generalised and thrown into the shape of rules. Next, it is said, that every man has a conscience, or natural faculty, which tells him without further trouble what is right and what is wrong.

The third question, Why should I do what is right? also admits of a variety of answers, which may be arranged under two principal heads. One school counts up the sanctions of morality, such as the legal, the popular, and the religious; i.e. you will be hanged, hated, and damned if you do such or such acts-therefore abstain. The other school speaks of a special sense of obligation which, as it asserts, rises up in the mind when it contemplates right actions as such, and which is entirely different in its character from either fear or hope, and constitutes in itself a peremptory, and entirely sufficient, reason for doing one set of things and abstaining from another. It is alleged that the conscience is the seat of this feeling.

It is not necessary, in order to investigate the rights of conscience, to enter into a discussion of the comparative merits of these two systems. In each of them the same great questions are discussed and decided, and though there is a considerable difference between the ways in which the second and third

questions are answered, the practical difference between the two is less important than it might at first sight be supposed to be. In each case the conscience plays much the same part. It is a guide, and a judge who executes his own sentences, and that quite as much in the utilitarian scheme as in the other.

That scheme may be, and we are disposed to think that it is, the true one; but the fact that men have consciences, explain it how you will, still remains true. There is an internal voice which warns the utilitarian, as well as other people, that this is to be done and that left undone, and which, after the act is over, makes them feel either regret or self-approval for having done it. We may, or may not, think that it is a truthful guide and a good judge—that is, that its admonitions point out the course which contributes to the production of a maximum of happiness, and that its judgments are of such a character as to furnish a motive for pursuing that course; but that it does influence human conduct, both as a guide and as a sanction, there can be no doubt at all. It is as much a matter of fact as any other fact in our whole nature.

Upon the other view of the nature of morals the position of conscience may look more important at first sight than it is upon utilitarian principles; but even on this theory it is plain enough that conscience is not, and cannot be, everything. Probably no moralist worthy of the name, or sufficiently eminent to exercise the least influence over his neighbours,