V SUBSTITUTE FOR CONSCIENCE: OLOMON was a wide-eyed observer. His study of character ranged from the Queen of Sheba to the Shulammite peasant girl, the heroine of the Song of Songs. The royal writer had a rare gift for judging human nature in his power of introspection, of knowing how it is one's self. To this he added an honesty in recording his experiences such as we ordinarily attribute to newspaper men in recording the foibles and scandals of other people. One of the sagest conclusions reached by Solomon was this," God made men upright, but they have. sought out many inventions." A noted Chinaman, about the same age of the world,-1000 B. C.,-made a similar observation regarding the fact of man's aberration from righteousness, but failed to note the real cause of it. In the Shu-king we read this: "The people are born good, and are changed by external things." Solomon avers that they change themselves and substitute "inventions for the original endowment. The chief and most dignified of these substi tutes for pure conscientiousness is Expediency, the theory that conscience is not a distinct faculty, but only a judgment of our own intelligence as to what is wisest conduct in view of results. "Honesty is the best policy" is the legend on the helmet of our new moral chivalry; only most men read it backward, thus "Best policy is honesty." Ich Dien is regarded as a threadbare and faded motto, good enough for the blind old King John of Bohemia, from whom the Prince of Wales borrowed his crest, but not up to date for a ruler of commercial England. Fiat justitia, ruat cælum is supposed by our practical politicians to be a bit of painted lightning found in the garret of the ancient mythologic playhouse beside the effigy of Jove. An argument for the theory that conscience is not a distinct faculty of the mind, but only an exercise of intellectual discretion, is drawn from the seeming variability in its decisions. Thus the Spartans taught their children that it was a virtue to steal, if it could be done without discovery. Cardinal Julian recommended that the Christian armies, without giving warning, break their truce with the Turks, in order to attack them with advantage at Varna. The Moslem, resenting the perfidy, rode into the battle behind a banner inscribed, "O Jesu, avenge the insult to thy name!" Benjamin Franklin deliberately closed the treaty with Great Britain after the Revolutionary War without consulting the French King, notwithstanding the fact that, in order to gain the assistance of France during the war, the American colonies had agreed to make no settlement with the enemy without the consent of their ally. Thousands of Labor Union men, otherwise of undoubted honesty, recently advocated disregard to their contract with the companies employing them. It is plausibly asked, If these men were conscientious, does conscience furnish any reliable standard for conduct? Is it a distinct voice of the soul worth recording? A close analysis of the motives involved in these cases will show, not a variation in conscience itself, but rather in the intellectual judgment, the data upon which conscience acted. All the alleged delinquents would plead their honesty of purpose. For example, in the rude age when men had scarcely organized industrial society, the law of meum and tuum was unsettled. Possession was credited to the strongest. It was therefore not an unnatural judgment on the part of the folk who were physically weaker than their neighbors that it was right to match strength with shrewdness, that the fox might honestly outwit the wolf. Thucydides, who tells this ancient tradition of the Spartans, is careful to note that they patronized thievery because they thought it was right. Cardinal Julian, in announcing that no faith need be kept with the infidel, based his decision on the assumption that a greater wrong would be done by allowing the Turkish invaders of Christendom to have uncontested sway of the lands which did not belong to them: that it was right to deceive robbers in order to save one's property. We may dissent from his reasoning, but cannot charge his conscience with patronizing wrong as such. So in Franklin's case. To have put the issue of the Revolutionary War into the hands of France would have been to alienate from the possession of the colonies vast sections of North America which France intended to claim for herself to the menace of the very right of selfgovernment for which the American patriots had fought; and further it would have perpetuated an alliance with a people who, however generous their assistance, were foreign to the New Republic in race, speech, religion, and ideas of government; and that to the exclusion of the further alliance with those who, though they had been temporarily enemies, were joined to us by ties of blood, of civilization, and prospective destiny. It doubtless seemed to Franklin as to his fellow members of the Peace Commission, John Adams and John Jay, that there was a higher right involved than the technical keeping of a word passed in the game of diplomacy. When the pledge to France was given it was conscientiously given, and when the events proved that it would be a wrong to the new government to keep the compact, not even the French charged us with immoral proceeding, though they chafed under their discomfiture. Similarly we may exonerate the conscience of the laboring men from the charge of substituting temporary expediency for moral judgment. They argued among themselves that a higher moral principle demanded their breaking the contracts,-namely the defense of their families from penury. In this they may have erred, as they certainly did in regard to the probable success of the strike; but we may attribute the error to their intelligence rather than their conscience. A righteous judge may give a wrong decision without staining his ermine if the case has not been properly presented to him, or if, through mere lack of acumen, he has failed to grasp the real matter to be adjudicated. Conscience is only judge of moralities. Where the intention has been to do the right, Expediency cannot claim to be a new Daniel come to judgment. The Expediency theory proposes to eliminate entirely the moral element from conduct, and to submit therefor the mere estimate of advantage. Its more benevolent advocates would, of course, enlarge the term "advantage" to include "the highest good to the greatest number." Even |