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CHAPTER NINE – THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE

THE religious mind loves mysteries. Conscience has always been set down as a mystery by religious people. It has been called "the still small voice," and we have been taught that it is a supernatural kind of sense by which man is guided in his knowledge of good and evil.

Now, I claim that conscience is no more supernatural than is the sense of smell, and no more mysterious than the stomach.

If conscience were what religious people think it is – a kind of heavenly voice whispering to us what things are right and wrong – we should expect to find its teachings constant. It would not chide one man, and approve another, for the same act. It would not warn men that an act was wrong in one age, and assure them in another age that the same act was right. It would not have one rule of morality for the guidance of an Englishman, and another rule of morality for the guidance of a Turk. It would not change its moral code as the man it is supposed to guide changes his beliefs through education and experience. It would not give such widely different men of the same age and nation.

If conscience were really a supernatural guide to right conduct it would always and everywhere tell man what is eternally right or eternally wrong.

But conscience is changeable and uncertain. It is a magnetic needle that points North at one time and South at another time; that points East on one ship and West on another ship; that points all round the compass for all kinds of travellers on life's ocean; that has no relation to the everlasting truths at all.

Sceptics have pointed out that "conscience is geographical"; that it gives different verdicts in different countries, on the same evidence.

But I shall show that conscience is:

1. Geographical: that it is not the same in one country as in another.

2. Historical: that it is not the same in one age as in another.

3. Personal: that it is not the same in one person as in another.

4. Changeable: it alters with its owner's mind.

And that, therefore, conscience is not a true and certain guide to right, and cannot be the voice of God.

First, as to geographical, or local, conscience. The English conscience looks with horror or disgust upon polygamy, child murder, cannibalism, and the blood feud.

The Turkish conscience allows many wives; the Redskin conscience allows the scalping of enemies; the Afghan conscience applauds the dutiful son who murders the nephew of his father's enemy; the cannibal conscience is silent at a feast of cold missionary; the Chinese conscience goes blandly to the killing of girl babies; the Rand conscience sees no evil in the flogging of Kaffirs and Chinese; the aristocratic conscience is not ashamed of taking the bread from starving peasants and their children; the capitalist conscience permits the making of fortunes out of sweated labour.

Now, cannibalism, murder, cheating, tyranny, the flogging of slaves, and the torture of enemies are all immoral and evil things. They cannot be good things in the East and bad things in the West. But conscience – the mysterious and wonderful "still small voice" – blames man in one part of the world and praises him in another for committing those acts.

Conscience is local: it tells one tale in Johannesburg or Pekin, and quite a different tale in Amsterdam or Paris.

And to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our reason.

As to historical conscience. What men thought good a few centuries ago they now think bad.

Take only a few examples. Men once saw no wrong in slavery, in trial by wager of battle, in witch-burning, in the torture of prisoners to extract evidence, in the whipping of lunatics, in the use of child-labour in mines and factories, in duelling, bear-baiting, prize-fighting, and heavy drinking.

Not very long ago men would tear out a man's tongue for "blasphemy," would hang a woman for stealing a turnip, would burn a bishop alive for heresy, would nail an author to the pillory by his ear for criticising a duke, would sell women and children felons into slavery; and conscience would never whisper a protest.

THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE

Now, it was wrong to burn heretics, and pillory reformers, and work babies to death in the mill and the mine in those days, or it is right to do the same things now.

But conscience now condemns as wrong the same acts which it once approved as right; it now approves as right what it once condemned as wrong.

Conscience, then, differs in different ages. Conscience tells two quite different tales at two different times.

And if we want to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our reason.

As to personal conscience. We all know that one man's conscience differs from another. We all know that in any English town on any day there are as many varieties of conscience as there are varieties of hands, and eyes, and feet, and noses.

There are the Nonconformist conscience, the Roman Catholic conscience, the Rationalist conscience, the Aristocratic conscience, the Plebeian conscience, the Military conscience, the Commercial conscience, the Tory conscience, and the Socialist conscience.

One man's conscience forbids him to swear, to eat meat, to drink wine, to read a newspaper on Sunday, to go to a ball or a theatre, to make a bet, to play at cards or football, to stay away from church.

Another man's conscience permits him all those indulgences, but compels him to pay trade union wages, to speak courteously to servants and poor persons, to be generous to beggars, and kind to dumb animals.

A very striking example of this personal difference in the ruling of conscience is afforded by the quite recent contrast between the sentiments of Northern and Southern Americans on the question of negro slavery.

Another equally striking example is the difference to-day between the rulings of the consciences of Socialists and sweaters.

My own conscience, for instance, never chides me for "Sabbath breaking" nor for "neglect of God"; but it would not allow me to grow rich on the rent of slum houses, nor on the earnings of half-starved children, nor on the sale of prurient novels, or adulterated beer, or sized calico.

Now, it is either right or wrong to do all these things. It cannot be right for one man to dance and wrong for another to dance; it cannot be right for one man to bet, and wrong for another man to bet; it cannot be right for one man to draw rents for slum houses, and wrong for another man to draw rents for slum houses.

But conscience tells some men that it is right to do these things, and tells other men it is wrong to do the same things.

Conscience is not the same thing to one man that it is to another man. It praises Brown and blames Jones for doing the same thing. It tells different tales to different men.

An when we want to know which is the true tale we have to use our reason.

As to changeable conscience. We all know very well that conscience does not keep to one rule of right and wrong even with one man; but that it changes its rule whenever the man changes his belief through teaching or experience.

I need not give many examples of these changes. Every reader can supply them for himself. When I was a boy my conscience pained me severely if I stayed away from Sunday school or neglected to say my prayers. But it does not chide me now for not going to church, nor for not reading the Bible, nor for not praying. Why has conscience thus changed its tone with me? Simply because I have changed my opinions.

But those things could not have been wrong then if they are right now. Conscience has changed. Conscience changes as the mind changes. It tells one tale in our youth, and another in our prime, and perhaps yet another in our decay.

And if we want to know which tale is the true tale we must use our reason.

And now we find that conscience is different in different nations, in different cities, in different classes, in different persons, in different ages, in different circumstances, in different moods.

And, when we come to think about it, we find that conscience never tells us anything we do not know. It is a voice which always tells us what we do know: what we believe. It does not teach us what acts are right and what acts are wrong. It reminds of what we have been taught about right or wrong.

It is not a divine voice, for it often leads us wrong. It is not a divine voice, for it is no wiser and no better than ourselves.

What is it? What is conscience? Conscience is chiefly habit: it is chiefly memory: but it is partly, perhaps, inherited instinct. Conscience is habit. We all know that it is easier to do a thing which we have often done before than to do a thing we have never done before.

We all know that what we call practice improves an organ or power of our body or our mind.

As the proverbs put it: "Use is second nature." "Practice makes perfect."

Most of us know that an organ develops with use and decays with disuse.

If you wish to develop your muscles you must use them. If you wish to improve your memory or to sharpen your wits you must use them.

When a man is first taught to use a rifle he finds to his surprise that he cannot pull the trigger just exactly when he wants it. But in time he does that quite without thought or effort. The muscles of his finger have been "educated" to act with his eye.

Some men, when they first begin to shoot, shrink from the rifle. They fear the recoil or the sudden explosion, and the muscles of their shoulder flinch. If a man gives way to that habit it grows upon him, and he can never shoot straight. The muscles have learnt to flinch; and they flinch.

One man falls into the habit of swearing. The habit grows upon him. The words come ever more readily to his tongue, and he swears more and more.

Now, let us suppose a boy has been taught that it is wrong to swear. In his memory lies the lesson. It has been repeated until it has grown strong. When he hears swearing it shocks him. But the more he hears it the less it shocks him. The words grow more familiar to his ear, just as the sound of a waterfall or of machinery grows familiar to the ear.

Then suppose he swears. That is a very unusual act for him. And his old lesson that to swear is wrong is still firm and ready. It is not his habit to swear: it is his habit to shrink from swearing.

So if he swears, his memory, which has been educated to resent all swearing, brings up at once to his notice the lessons of years.

The same kind of thing is seen on the cricket field. A batsman is playing steadily. He has been trained to play cautiously against good bowling. But he has a favourite stroke. The bowler knows it He sends a ball very aptly called a "ticer" to entice the batsman to hit, in the hopes of a catch. The desire to make that pet cut or off-drive is strong; but the "habit" of caution is stronger; he lets the ball go by. Or the habit is not as strong as the desire, and he cuts the ball; and, even as he watches it flash safely through the field for the boundary, he feels that he ran a foolish risk, and must not repeat it.

What is it tells him he did wrong? It is his memory: his memory, which has been educated to check his rashness. In fact, it is his cricketer's conscience that warns him.

So with the youth who swears. No sooner has the word passed his lips than his educated memory, which has been trained to check swearing, brings up the lesson, and confronts him with it.

But let him swear again and again, and in time the moral lessons in his memory will be overlaid by the familiar sound of curses; the habit of flinching from an oath will grow weak, and the habit of using oaths will grow strong.

It is really what happens with the rifleman who gives way to the recoil and forms a habit of flinching, or with the cricketer who allows his desire to score to overcome his habit of caution. The old habit fades from disuse; the new habit grows strong from use. The rifleman becomes a hopelessly bad shot; the batsman degenerates into a slogger: the young man swears every time he speaks, and his conscience loses all power to check him.

Take the case of the letter "h." The young Lochinvar who comes out of the West sounds his aitches properly and easily – just as properly and as easily as a fencer makes his parries, as a pianist strikes the right notes, as C. B. Fry plays a straight bat. It is a matter of teaching and of use, and has become a habit. From his earliest efforts at speech he has heard the "h" sounded, has been checked if he failed to sound it, has corrected himself if he made a slip.

But the young Lochinvar who comes out of the East drops his aspirates all over the place without a blush or a pang. He has never been taught to sound the "h." He has not practised it. He has formed the habit of not sounding it, and it would take him years of painful effort to change the habit.

Now what happens in the case of a letter "h" is what happens in the case of the rifle, of the ticing ball, of the swearing. One man's memory is educated to remind him not to swear, not to slog, not to flinch, not to drop the "h." The other man's memory is not so trained.

And this trained memory we call conscience. It is purely habit: and it is wholly mechanical.

There is a good story of a gang of moonlighters who had shot a landlord, and were afterwards sitting down to supper. One man was just raising a piece of meat to his lips when the clock struck twelve. Instantly he dropped the meat. "Be jabers!" he said, "'tis Friday!"

That was the habit of abstaining from meat on a Friday. It had been drilled into his memory, and it acted mechanically.

Conscience, then, is largely a matter of habit: it depends a great deal on what we are taught. But it is not wholly a matter of habit, nor does it depend wholly on our teaching.

We all know that two brothers, born of the same parents, brought up in the same home, educated at the same school, taught the same moral lessons, may be quite different in the matter of conscience. One will shrink from giving pain, the other will be cruel; one will be quite truthful, the other will tell lies.

And so to go back to our rifleman and our cricketer. Every novice does not flinch from the recoil, every batsman is not prudent. No. Because men are different by nature.

Some boys are easy to train; some are not. Some are naturally obedient; some are not. Some are naturally cruel; some are naturally merciful.

The conscience of a boy depends upon what he is by nature and what he is taught.

If the emotion of anger is naturally strong in a boy it will need a better-drilled memory to check his anger than if the emotion of anger were weak.

I do not mean it will need more teaching to curb his "will," but it will need more teaching to build up his conviction that anger is wrong, because the motion resists the teaching.

But in the case of a boy gentle and merciful by nature it needs no teaching to prevent him from torturing frogs, and very little to make him know that to torture frogs is wrong.

It is a common mistake in morals to say that a man is to blame for an act because he "knew it was wrong." He may have been told that it was wrong. But until he feels that it is wrong, and believes that it is wrong, it is not true to say that he knows it is wrong; for he may only know that some other person says it is wrong, which is a very different thing.

For instance, it might be said in this way that I am wicked for listening to Beethoven on the Sabbath, "because I know that it is wrong." But I do not know that is wrong. I do not believe that it is wrong. I only know that some people say it is wrong.

So I claim that conscience is what a man's nature and teaching make it: that it is a habit of memory, and no more mysterious than the habit of smoking, or dropping the aspirate, or eating peas with a knife.

Let us now look at some of the scientific evidence.

SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE

I will quote first from Darwin, "Descent of Man," Chapter 4:

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable, namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well, developed as in man… Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct would arise as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct, had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression.

Now let us see what Darwin means. The social instincts include human sympathy and the desire for the company of our fellows; love of approbation, which is the desire to be loved, or to be thought well of, by our fellows; and gratitude, which is the love we pay back for the love which is given us:

These social instincts are sometimes so strong, even in animals, as to overcome the powerful maternal instinct; so that migratory birds, as Darwin shows, and as we all know who have read our Gilbert White, will go with the flock and leave their new broods defenceless and unprovided for.

The social instincts, then, are very strong, and they lead us to conform to social rule or sentiment.

But now Darwin tells us that in the case of man "images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain." These "images" are mental pictures, and they are printed on those brain cells which make what we call "memory." Now, Darwin tells us that these memory pictures would cause us pain as often as they reminded us that we had broken the social rule or outraged the social sentiment in order to indulge some instinct of a selfish kind.

And Darwin makes it clear to us that such a selfish desire may be strong before it is gratified, and may yet leave an impression of pleasure after it is gratified which is weak indeed in presence of the deep-rooted social memories.

Let us take a few examples. The desire for a pleasure may be strong enough to drive us to enjoy it, and yet the pleasure may seem to us not worth the cost or trouble after the desire has been sated. When we are hungry the desire for food is intense.

After we have eaten we are no longer hungry. But we grow hungry again, and then the desire for food is as intense as ever.

Dick Swiveller goes to a bachelor party, and the desire for the convivial glass is strong within him. He drinks too much, and the next morning calls himself a fool for drinking. He is ashamed of his excess, and he has the headache, and the temptation is now absent. But when he is well again, and at another party, the old desire comes back with the old power. So Dick once more indulges too freely in "the rosy," and has another sick head in consequence. And then the social instincts rise up and reproach him, and the sated appetite, being weak, appears to him contemptible.

The social instinct is constant: the selfish desire is intermittent. The passion is like a tide which leaps the moral wall and then falls back to low water. The wall remains: it may be sullied or shaken, but it is still a moral wall, and only a long succession of such tides can break it down. When passion has broken down the moral wall the man is at the mercy of his passions. They flood the dwelling of his soul again and again until he is a ruin.

This, I think, explains Darwin's idea of the struggle between the social and selfish instincts.

In "Adam Bede" George Eliot blames the seducer of Hettie Sorrel for doing a terrible wrong for the sake of a brief selfish indulgence. But that charge is unfair. It implies that the deed was planned and done in cold blood. But the fact was that both Hettie and Arthur were carried away by a rush of passion. The great tide of desire, a desire made terribly strong by Nature, had overleapt the walls of morality and prudence.

Anger has been called a brief madness. The same kind of thing might be said of all the passions. It is as easy to be virtuous after the temptation as to be wise after the event We can all be brave in the absence of the enemy. The result of a struggle between the sea and a wall depends upon the force of the tide and the strength of the wall. It behoves us all to see that moral walls are builded strong and kept in good repair.

Let us go back to the action of the memory in the making of morals. Dr. C. W. Saleeby, who is doing good work in this field, gives us clear light in his book, "The Cycle of Life." He says:

Memory means a change impressed more or less deeply on the grey surface of the brain.

A change. Those "images" which Darwin tells us are continually passing through the mind have actually made a change in the brain. That is to say, they have made a change in the mind: they have made a change in the personality.

After showing how a singer learns to produce a note properly by practice until he is almost incapable of producing it improperly, and until its proper production has become mechanical, Dr. Saleeby says:

The effect of practice, as in any other art, mechanical, mental, or both, has been so to alter the constitution of the nerve cells as to produce a new mode of action.

The nerve cells have been re-arranged, and the habit of the person has been altered. He is no longer quite the same person. He now acts and thinks differently.

Now, these changes in the arrangement of the brain cells and fibres may be looked upon as the building up of the moral wall. And the desires and aversions are like the rising and falling tide.

And the tide of our desires is a tide of nature. Because our desires and aversions seem to work by reflex action. What is reflex action?

Reflex action, as I use the term here, is the mechanical action of the nerves. We do not grow hungry, or thirsty, or angry, or compassionate on purpose: we do not fall in love on purpose. The stomach, working, like the heart and lungs, by reflex action, without our knowledge or direction, uses up the food, and our nerves demand more. The desire for food, for love, for revenge, is due to reflex action. The desire makes itself felt first without our asking, and we have to refuse or to grant its request after it is made.

We do not say: "Behold, there is a pretty face: I will be attracted by it." We cannot help being attracted by the face that attracts us, any more than we can help being hungry. The face attracts us, more or less, and we decide to seek out its owner, according to the strength of the attraction and of the reason for resisting the attraction. We see a diamond. We do not say: "There is a diamond. I will not think it beautiful." We cannot think it anything but beautiful; but whether or not we shall buy it or steal it depends upon the strength of our desire and the strength of the reasons against gratifying that desire.

Now, let us see how these conflicting ideas act. A man sees a beautiful woman, and desires to see more of her. But he fears if he sees much of her he will fall in love with her. And he is engaged to marry another woman. What goes on in his mind? Memory reminds him that he is engaged, and that it would be "wrong" to follow his desire. And every time the temptation draws him to follow his desire he calls up the "image" of the other woman, and he calls up the images of old lessons, of old thoughts, of old opinions read and heard by him. And the stronger the temptation grows the more earnestly does he invoke these images. Now, what does all this show? It shows the contest between the reflex action of desire, backed by the memories of love's pleasures, on the one part; and, on the other part, of the moral feelings of memories of what he has learnt or thought to be right and wrong. It is then a battle between memory and desire.

A man is never tempted by a woman who does not attract him.

He never steals a thing he does not want. He does not drink a liquor he does not like. The desire must be there before his will is put to the test. And the desire is independent of his will.

A child has no morals. It has only desires. If it likes sugar it will take sugar. If it is angry it will strike. It is only when it is told that to steal sugar or strike its nurse is "naughty" that it begins to have a moral sense. And its moral sense consists entirely of what it learns– that is to say, its moral sense is memory. And its memory is a change in the arrangement of the cells of the grey matter of the brain. And these changes make the brain into a different kind of brain: make the child into a different kind of child.

Now, the child does not teach itself these moral lessons. It does not know them. It has to be taught by those who do know. And its moral sense depends upon what it is taught. And its conscience depends upon what it is taught.

And, that being so, is it not quite evident that the conscience is not the voice of God; that the conscience is not an innate knowledge of right and wrong born with the child; but it is nothing more nor less than the action of the memory?

The whole of this subject is ably and exhaustively treated by Luys in "The Brain and Its Functions," but I have not room here to go into it fully. Briefly put, the scientific explanation may be expressed thus: The brain cells have power to receive and to repeat impressions. When a new sensory impulse arises it awakens these impressions by means of the fibres of association. It is as though the brain were a phonographic "record." Upon this "record" there is printed, let us say, some moral lesson, as "Look not upon the wine when it is red in the cup." On the word "wine" being heard the association fibre which links the idea of wine to the moral idea of temperance sets the "record" in motion, and memory recalls the caution, "Look not upon the wine in the cup." It is as if a "record" on which is printed a song by Dan Leno were joined up with a battery which, upon hearing the word "Leno," would start the "record" to repeat the song.

I hope I have made that clear. I will now conclude by quoting from Dr. Saleeby a passage dealing with the important subject of "association." I take it from "The Cycle of Life":

Nerve cells are significantly incapable of division and reproduction… All the experience of living merely modifies, the state of the cells already present. The modification is memory.

But though a nerve-cell cannot divide, it can send forth new processes, or nerve-fibres from itself – what we call a nerve being simply a collection of processes from a nerve-cell. Throughout the brain and spinal cord we find great numbers of nerve processes which simply run from one set of nerve-cells to another, instead of running to a sense-organ, or a muscle, or a gland. Such fibres are called association fibres, their business being to associate different sets of nerve-cells.

It is conceivable that an exceptional development of such fibres may account for the possession of a good memory, or, at any rate, for the power easily to learn such co-ordinations as are implied in violin-playing, billiards, cricket, or baseball. Granting the power of nerve-cells, even when adult, to form new processes, it might be supposed that the exercise of this power accounts for the acquirement of certain habits of thought or action.

Now, whether or not nerve-cells have power to form new association fibres late in life, it is important to notice that the association fibres which exist at birth or form in childhood are the means by which one idea suggests another; and the means by which, as I said just now, upon the utterance of the word "wine" all we have remembered to have read or heard about wine is repeated by the memory "record."

And, just as a phonograph record can only repeat the song or speech that is printed upon it, so the memory can only repeat what it contains, and it contains nothing that has not been printed there through the medium of the senses.

That is why the word "marriage" carries with it no moral revulsion against polygamy in the mind of a Turk. The brain of a Turk has no "record" on its grey matter of any moral teaching against polygamy. And the "still small voice" does not make good the absence of the "record," and tell him that polygamy is wrong. This being so, what becomes of the theory that conscience is a mysterious agent of God implanted in the mind of man to guide him to do right and to shun wrong?

A cannibal chief was told by a missionary that it was wicked to have two wives. He went away and ate one wife. The missionary had printed on his brain "record" the lesson that to have two wives was wrong; but there was no "record" there to tell him he must not kill one wife and eat her.

Where was the "still small voice," the "divine guide to right conduct"?