Imatges de pàgina
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prides himself on being so. The Italians have a special word for this particular sort of pride; they call it pavoneggiarsi-to peacock oneself. Probably we shall agree that of all our circle of associates such a man is often the most provoking, unmanageable, incalculable, and occasionally the most cantankerous. He does not reason on ordinary principles; he does not act on commonly received doctrines; he is not guided by the axioms or habits which govern the conduct of the mass of men. You never know where he may turn up; and when he has turned up anywhere, you can scarcely ever move him. He must,' he tells you, 'act uprightly—fiat justitia ruat cælum. He must do whatever his conscience directs' --and sometimes his conscience whispers very odd commands. Sometimes, also-which is more to our present purpose-other voices usurp the functions of conscience, forge its exact signature, speak in its name, and imitate its very tones.

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Often what a man takes for the dictate of conscience is nothing more than a whiff of impulse, a caprice, a crotchet, which an undisciplined mind cannot distinguish from the deliberate decision of a competent intelligence; and the more impetuous the impulse, the more sudden and vehement the caprice, the more it is likely to represent itself to his imagination as a sacred command of the monitor within. There are some persons who can no more discriminate between a desire and a duty than others who have a mere smattering of arithmetic can cast up a long addition sum right. Yet these are precisely the characters most prone to be dogged and persistent in their noxious blunder, and to dress it, both to themselves and to the world, in the gaudiest guise. How frequently do we meet with men incapable of injustice or cruelty themselves, who will defend the most scandalous instances of both if perpetrated by women whom they love, and maintain that chivalry' forbids them to do otherwise; or who, if they themselves had wronged a fellow-creature, would be prompt with the amplest apology, but who would repudiate as pusillanimous the suggestion of enforcing similar atonement when a wife is the offender.

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In most instances of this sort, mental confusion or defect must bear the blame, because it really is the origin of the faults which are laid at the door of conscientiousness, and unrighteously suffered to pass under its name. But in five cases out of six, mere conceit is the fons et origo mali; and in such the deceitful veil should be rudely torn away-not the less rudely because the deceit is often self-deception, and genuine self-deception too. We are all of us probably familiar with men-usually young men, or narrow-minded men, often mere prigs and puppies-who affect a course of action, or a standard of right and wrong, at variance not only with that of the general world (which might often be permissible enough and even praiseworthy), but with that of those whom they are bound to defer

to, and cannot but respect, whom in their secret hearts perhaps they do respect--not only fathers and mothers whose character they cannot fail to reverence, whose experience they must recognise as at least affording a primâ facie probability of wisdom, and whose views they know to be the very reverse of inconsiderate or low-moralists by profession, whose tone and thoughtful depth only the most presumptuous could dare to question. They venture to condemn where their teachers would acquit, and to admire where these teachers would reprobate or deplore; to become enthusiasts in a cause which older and wiser men regret and which in riper manhood themselves are certain to abandon. They are conscientiously' resolute in acting up to their own convictions, fancying all the while that they are more deep and far-sighted than others, when in truth it is only that they are more inexperienced, and pluming themselves on the simplicity and purity of their vision, while their shallowness and narrowness are leading them astray. Life abounds in specimens of this class, and the character is a favourite one with novelists.1 They are often cured, but usually too late. They sometimes repent of their errors, frequently outgrow them, but not till they have done endless mischief, and inflicted incalculable pain, and perhaps embittered and embarrassed their whole after life. Meanwhile the plea of conscience, and the supposed obligation of obeying the orders it issues as those of a despot by divine right, enable them to escape alike condemnation and contrition.2

1 Literary and Social Judgments, p. 135.

2 Mrs. Gaskell's beautiful novel Ruth affords an excellent instance. Ruth, innocent and beautiful, left an orphan and without connections, is turned out of doors at sixteen by a rash and hasty mistress, in whose establishment she had been placed to learn dress-making; and not knowing whither to turn in her despair, is persuaded by a gentleman, who had already half-engaged her youthful fancy, to accept shelter and assistance from him. She goes astray, scarcely if at all conscious that she is doing wrong, but from a gentleness of nature that never dreams of resisting the influence of those she loves. . . . The process by which her character is purified and elevated, and her fault redeemed through the influence of Mrs. Benson and her passionate attachment to her child, is described with a fidelity to the deeper secrets of our nature as beautiful as it is unique. Among the members of Mr. Benson's congregation is a wealthy and influential merchant, Mr. Bradshaw—the very distilled essence of a disagreeable Pharisee; ostentatious, patronising, self-confident, and self-worshipping; rigidly righteous according to his own notion, but in our eyes a heinous and habitual offender; a harsh and oppressive tyrant in his own family, without perceiving it, or rather without admitting that his harsh oppression is other than a grand virtue; yet driving by it one child into rebellion, and another into hypocrisy and crime, and arousing the bad passions of every one with whom he comes into contact; having no notion of what temptation is, either as a thing to be resisted or succumbed to, for the simple reason that all his temptations-those of pride, selfishness, and temper-are yielded to and defended as virtuous impulses; prone to trample, and ignorant of the very meaning of tenderness and mercy. This man, reeking with the sins Christ most abhorred, turns upon the unhappy Ruth (who, after six years, had become governess in his house) as soon as he learns her history, with a brutal violence and a coarse unfeeling cruelty which we need not scruple to affirm constituted a far greater sin than poor Ruth would have committed if her lapse from chastity had been persistent and deliberate, instead of being halfunconscious, transient, and bitterly and nobly atoned for.

Often, again, what is called Conscientiousness, is simply the egotism of a wilful and intolerant nature. We are passionate advocates of our wrong opinion because it is ours; we insist upon following our mistaken or mischievous course for the same reason, and because our unchastened temper is impatient of contradiction or control; we make a virtue out of one of the most dangerous and offensive of our vices. We sail under false colours, and go through life a sort of moral pirates, carrying a lying flag at our masthead. Occasionally the case is even worse, and it is pure love of power which uses the plea to throw dust into the eyes of an unpenetrating and indulgent world. A position of command-about the weightiest burden of responsibility which can be laid upon a scrupulous nature —is too constantly exercised merely as the privilege of an imperious volition; and the pressure of obligation which might be in danger of paralysing action in a truly conscientious man is scarcely even felt by one who only credits himself with being such, and fancies he is discharging his duty when he is, in fact, only obeying his propensities.

Probably, however, the most notorious and flagrant instance of conscientious crime is religious persecution. It is also the most widely spread and the most enduring. It has been the curse and the obloquy of mankind for the last eighteen centuries. It did not exactly come in with Christianity, because specimens of it, or what looks like it, are traceable in classic times, and the temper and ideas which are its excuse and inspiration now, were partly at least its inspiration among the early Israelites in their treatment of the Canaanitic tribes; but it can scarcely be denied that its prevalence, its systematisation, its elevation to the rank of a duty and a virtue, is due to those who would monopolise what they abuse-the name of Christians; and Islamism, which commands the extermination of infidels, only follows our example and betters our instruction. It would almost seem as if the habit and the principle of persecution had begun with the first dawn of a true faith, had spread with the spread of monotheism, and had culminated with what the world has agreed to recognise as its purest and loftiest form. Nay, more, it must be admitted, we fear, that the spirit of religious intolerance has been rampant just in proportion as belief has been enthusiastic and dogmatic, and that the periods of most earnest convictions have precisely and invariably been those when persecution has been most active and most barbarous.

Now, while unquestionably this form of misguided conscientiousness is of all the most noxious and desolating, it is probably at the same time the most honest and the most logical. While as wrongheaded as any, it has in it less of semi-conscious self-delusion or selfindulgence than most. It has in it more of principle and less o passion. No doubt, that impatience of difference of opinion to which

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we are all so prone, and that domineering temper which is among the least amiable of our faults, lie at the bottom of much religious intolerance, and are mixed up with nearly all; but the doctrine which really dictates and sustains persecution-without which it could scarcely have survived the growth of our intelligence and the increasing tenderness of our nature-is a legitimate inference from the Gospel teaching; a false conclusion and conviction common to nearly every Christian Church, professed by nearly every sect of sincere believers, and warranted, it is vain to dispute, by the Scriptures which nearly all accept. The received creed, which we are only slowly beginning to outgrow or to expurgate, pronounces that men's salvation depends not on what they do, but on what they think, not on righteous conduct and a Christian spirit, but on sound dogma and correct belief, not on being imbued with and governed by the mind which was in Jesus,' but on having accepted right ideas as to who Jesus was and what he taught. Till this fatal notion is exploded, Christianity can neither bear its destined fruits nor deserve its borrowed name. So long as it reigns paramount, religious persecution can neither be denounced as illegitimate, nor resented as iniquitous. If my eternal salvation really depends upon the faith I hold, it is impossible to argue that any severity, any barbarism, any oppression which offers the prospect of converting me to the faith that opens the gates of heaven, may not be the most righteous and kindly treatment to pursue towards me-is not, or may not be, not only a justifiable course, but a sacred and a solemn duty. "The theory of persecution,' it has been well said, 'would be invulnerable, if its major premiss were not unsound.'

To mention other instances in which Conscience' is quite astray, or rather in which what calls itself conscience must be content with the more appropriate name of prejudice or ignorance, we may refer to two which have cropped up not unfrequently of late. The error in each case maintains itself upon a scanty but undeniable fragment of argument and fact.

The 'Peculiar People,' as they are termed by those they puzzle, are a small sect of Christians of the most uneducated class, who, if their children fall ill, refuse to have recourse to ordinary use of drugs or doctors, but pray over the invalid and leave the issue of the matter in the Lord's hands.' If the child in the course of nature recover, they thank God. If he die the British magistrates commit the parents for manslaughter, as having neglected to employ the recognised means of cure. Both the law and the offenders have much to say for themselves; and the parents, granting the assumed premisses common to both, have undeniably the best of the argument; they are the closer logicians, but the greater fools. They plead: 'We are ignorant and simple folk, but we must obey our consciences. Our teachers, Christian lawgivers, Christian magistrates, Christian

ministers, all agree in telling us that the New Testament is the best guide for people like us, and indeed they say an infallible guide for all. Now James, an inspired Apostle of Christ, speaking in the Holy Scriptures (James v. 14, 15) saith, "Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." We acted as God by the mouth of his prophets ordered us ;—and "whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto men more than unto God, judge ye," as another Apostle, Peter, said.' Whereupon the magistrate, if he be an honest man, is considerably puzzled ;—if he be a sceptic, he replies that such is not the law, and that he must obey the law, and that the peculiar person is very ignorant and simple (which is precisely the groundwork of his argument);—if he be an ordinary believer, he mutters something about unlearned folk 'wresting Scripture to their own destruction,' abuses him for want of sense, and assures him that he is mistaken in his interpretation of the Testament. But both alike send the unfortunate defendant away with his sentence of fine or imprisonment added to the loss of his child, quite unconvinced, greatly shaken in his understanding by this conflict between law and Scripture, probably fancying himself a martyr and his condemner a cruel oppressor, and at all events resolved to sin again. But no one regards him as a man who can 'afford to keep a conscience' or is entitled to so high a privilege.3

Another set of unqualified devotees of conscience are to be found among more educated circles, and have more to say for themselves. Their error is traceable less to want of knowledge than to partial and incomplete knowledge. We refer to those who refuse to have their children vaccinated, as the law requires, on the plea that the (vaccine) lymph used for the operation has, or may have, become vitiated by long transmission through the human constitution, of which it may have contracted, and does occasionally convey, some of the impurities, and even some of the diseases-one, at least, certainly of the most offensive. The fact on which the plea is advanced is admitted-is undoubtedly valid for requiring the amendment and modification of the law; whether it ought to be recognised as warranting violation of the law may assuredly be questioned. The arguments pro and con lie in a nutshell, and the premisses on which they are founded are not

We must observe, however, that the most decisive argument of the magistrate in favour of enforcing obedience to the common law is that the father is dealing with the case of his children; he is playing, as is believed, with the lives of others, not with his own. He is charged with manslaughter, not with suicide. Now no man is entitled to be whimsical in dealing with the lives of others. Justice as well as law (as far as may be) requires that these shall be governed and determined by the common sense of the world at large. You may not choose to take physic yourself; but you are not entitled to deny it, any more than food, to those whom you are bound to support.

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