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Now Freud would doubtless have insisted that to regard the use of
the name of God in this way is merely superstitious--that blasphemy
may be in bad taste and an offense to what is associated with
precious experience, but that it will cause none of the harm the
ancient tabus associated with it. It is an example of those things
left over from ancient conditioning and which still
persist--irrationally. To this example, psychologists might add many
another. So that Freud recorded his own opinion that conscience may
have very little to do with sound reasoning or good judgment.
Conscience may persist in condemning us when a clear view of the
matter would exonerate us, and if this leads to an inner conflict
which we are not able to resolve, perhaps we will suffer an anxiety
neurosis, or at the very least, have to put up with a good deal of
emotional disturbance.
Therefore, he argues, conscience does not simply mediate between
rational right and rational wrong; it carries into the present a
great deal that might better have been left in the past. But when it
comes to dispensing with conscience altogether, Freud is not able to
do it. Indeed, his own clinical experience taught him that anyone
who tries to bring about a cure by uprooting a patient's conscience
is doomed to failure. Even a bad conscience seemed better than no
conscience. So that Freud concluded that all that could be done was
to try to re-educate a neurotic conscience wherever you had the
opportunity, and meanwhile continue to explore the matter.
Which, from his point of view, may have seemed all right; but where
does it leave the rest of us? Well, the 1920's thought it left us
free to do exactly what we wished--or at any rate, whatever we could
get away with. Why take any notice of a conscience that grew up out
of tabus? Why not leave it to the psychologists and the sociologists
and meanwhile live an unfettered existence? Conscience was out of
date, so strike up the band!
Yes, but how did it work out? People had a lot of fun--or did they?
There might be some doubt even about the fun, but there was no doubt
at all about the advent of Hitler and Dr. Goebbels. This was what
you got when conscience was thrown aside. Here were the men who
openly and deliberately threw it aside. Hitler announced that this
was what he was doing in his book Mein Kampf. Dr. Goebbels made it
clear every time he spoke over the radio. And so we had to wreck
half the world in a war that has made the entire human future
dubious because we did not have conscience enough to recognize evil
when we saw it and conscience enough to take steps to end it before
it threatened to dominate the world.
Do you say, But wait a minute! Most of the western world had a great
deal of conscience about war--that is why they hesitated to do
anything to end the new evil. Nonsense! It was not the horror of
killing that made the multitudes pacifist, it was fear of dying.
They were not concerned for their consciences; they were afraid for
their skins!
Now, I want to suggest this morning, not that conscience ought to be
allowed to creep back because we are not getting along so well
without it; or that superstition or no superstition, it is
indispensable. I have no use for things that creep back, and no more
willingness than anyone else for superstitions. What I want to
suggest is that conscience is no more a superstition than the air we
breathe. Nor, because it comes out of the primitive past, does it
need to be primitive.
Everything comes out of the primitive past. Because our hands were
once forepaws, it doesn't mean that they are not really hands at all
but only misshapen feet. The fact that our remote animal ancestors
once lived in the ocean does not require us to regard ourselves as
fundamentally nothing but fish. The changes wrought by the ages are
real. They may not be complete; there may be too much of the past in
the present; but nonetheless, the changes are not only real but
decisive. It is not in the least scientific to say that what science
has not yet understood can be left out of account. It must not. If
the physical sciences had left out of account what they could not
explain, they would still be infant sciences. And now the social
sciences, the science of what man is and what human society is, must
be just as scientific as the physical sciences. They must admit
openly that conscience is something they know a little about--just a
very little by delving into the past--but that this little is hardly
even a beginning. They must admit that conscience is real though
they do not understand it, just as it once had to be admitted that
electricity was real though no one understood it. Nor will it do to
say that conscience is just "tabu" any more than it would do to say
that electricity is only found in the form of lightning or in the
shock that comes from an electric eel.
We must admit that whatever the difficulties, there really is a
distinction between right and wrong. There really is a penalty for
wrong decisions, for the refusal of what calls upon us for justice
and righteousness. We must admit that generosity and kindness really
do improve the quality of a human being. We must admit the facts of
moral heroism. You cannot explain a Jeremiah or a Jesus by talking
about "tabu." It will not be enough to wait for the social sciences
to catch up and tell us all about conscience. Unless we have some
conscience in the meanwhile, there will not be time for the social
sciences to catch up. The world will go back to the primitive and
conscience will have to begin again with "tabu."
The truth is that no matter how incomplete the explanation we can
give, conscience is not only real but very vigorously so. It is not
something that somehow happened to life in the process of its
evolution: it is something that life caused to happen to itself.
Conscience is part of whatever life is. Part of its inner force,
insisting upon its own development. It no more "merely happens
itself.
Conscience is part of whatever life is. Part of its inner force,
insisting upon its own development. It no more "merely happens
itself.
Conscience is part of whatever life is. Part of its inner force,
insisting upon its own development. It no more "merely happens" than
the sight of the eye merely happens. Sight is something that life
needed to see the world in which it was working out its destiny: so
sight was produced. Conscience is something that life needs to see
its way to higher levels of fulfillment: and conscience is produced.
Produced by whatever is the final, innermost reality of the
existence of the living being called man. Conscience is the sight of
the soul. It indicates to whoever wants to know--whoever sincerely
wants to know--what should be the direction of his life, what he
must do to remain at peace within himself. And it indicates these
things increasingly better to anyone who gives it a chance. It is
not some separate thing implanted in the brain or heart by God; no,
but it is the creative spirit of life itself moving within the
thoughts we think and struggling for victory in the things we do. As
to the imperfections of conscience, imperfection of every kind
testifies to the perfect towards which it moves. Error testifies to
the truth from which it errs, and by which it must be amended. If
conscience had already reached its final form and were perfect, it
could not grow--and growth is essential to it. Only the imperfect
can still grow. None of the difficulties, none of the uncertainties,
excuse us from what conscience is clear about. And conscience is
clear about a great many more things than people like to open their
eyes to. Not only clear but rational--reasonable: utterly
reasonable. What is more reasonable than the justice a man owes to
his brother man? If justice to himself is reasonable the same
reasons apply to all others. What is more reasonable than the golden
rule? Yet how far have we got in doing to others as we wish hey
would do to us?
To try to discard conscience is not only risky, as this generation
has discovered for itself; but it is bad psychology as Freud
discovered, though he didn't carry his discovery through to a
sufficient conclusion: it is also unscientific as any scientist must
admit if he is honest, for a reality is a reality whether it be
tangible or intangible, and realities must not be left out of
account because we cannot yet explain them. Yes, and besides being
these things, the attempt to impugn conscience is frequently the
device of a cheap and shabby mentality: one that wishes to escape
the truth of its own insight and the justice of its own demands.
There is a skepticism that is useful but there is also a precipitate
and unreasonable skepticism that corrodes the very meaning out of
life and blights and withers all the higher qualities of
personality. Let us admit what is real and try to grow with it, not
destroy our souls by suppressing it. Ignorance is a frontier, not a
barrier, and faith precedes knowledge when we push a frontier back.
Let us have faith, then, for religion is venturesome. Let us follow
the good we see toward the greater good we hope for. Let us know in
this as in all things that man is not man until his reach exceeds
his grasp. And thus answer our question: What is conscience?
Conscience is a growing awareness of right and wrong, of good and
evil, demanding that we choose between them. Conscience is part of
the essence of life itself--the life we know as inner life, the life
that forms itself into truth and righteousness and beauty.
Conscience is the sight of the soul.
Prayer: O God, by the truth our own heart speaks, make us worthy of
our task. Amen.
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