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BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. 
 
 BY JOSEPH COOK. 
 
 BIOLOGY. With Preludes on Current Events. Three Colored Illustrations. 
 
 12mo. Sixteenth thousand.$1.50 
 
 TRANSCENDENTALISM. With Preludes on Current Events. 12mo. Tenth 
 
 thousand.1.50 
 
 ORTHODOXY. With Preludes on Current Events. Seventh Thousand . . 1.50 
 CONSCIENCE. With Preludes on Current Events. Fifth Thousand « . 1.50 
 
 HEREDITY. With Preludes on Current Events . .1.50 
 
 MARRIAGE. With Preludes on Current Events. 1.50 
 
 LABOR. With Preludes on Current Events. 1.50 
 
 SOCIALISM. With Preludes on Current Events. 1.50 
 
 OCCIDENT. With Preludes on Current Events. (A new volume) .... 1.50 
 
 ORIENT. With Preludes on Current Events. (A new volume with Portrait) . . 1.50 
 
 “ I do not know of any work on Conscience in which the true theory of ethics is so 
 clearly and forcibly presented, together with the logical inferences from it'in support of the 
 great truths of religion. The review of the whimsical and shallow speculations of Matthew 
 Arnold is especially able and satisfactory.” — Professor Francis Bowen, Harvard Univer¬ 
 sity. 
 
 “These Lectures are crowded so full of knowledge, of thought, of argument, illumined 
 with such passages of eloquence and power, spiced so frequently with deep-cutting though 
 good-natured irony, that I could make no abstract from them without utterly mutilating 
 tliem.”— Rev. Dr. Thomas Hill, ex-President of Harvard University, in Christian Register. 
 
 “Joseph Cook is a phenomenon to be accounted for. No other American orator lias 
 done what he has done, or any tiling like it; and, prior to the experiment, no voice wouid 
 have been bold enough to predict its success.” — Rev. Professor A. P. Peabody of Harvard 
 University. 
 
 “ Mr. Cook is a specialist. His work, as it now stands, represents fairly the very latest 
 and best researches.”— George M. Beard, M.D., of New York. 
 
 “By far the most satisfactory of recent discussions in this field, both in method and 
 execution.” — Professor Borden P. Bowne of Boston University. 
 
 “ Mr. Cook is a great master of analysis. He shows singular justness of view in his 
 manner of treating the most difficult and perplexing themes .— Princeton Review. 
 
 “The Lectures are remarkably eloquent, vigorous, and powerful.” — R. Payne Smith, 
 Dean of Canterbury. 
 
 “They are wonderful specimens of shrewd, clear, and vigorous thinking.” — Rev. Dr. 
 Angus , the College, Regent's Park. 
 
 “These are very wonderful Lectures.” — Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 
 
 “Traversing a very wide field, cutting right across the territories of rival specialists, the 
 work on Biology contains not one important scientific misstatement, either of fact or 
 theory.” — Bibliotheca Sacra. 
 
 “ Vigorous and suggestive. Interesting from the glimpses they give of the present phases 
 of speculation in what is emphatically the most thoughtful community in the United 
 States.” — London Spectator. 
 
 “ I admired the rhetorical power with which, before a large mixed audience, the speaker 
 knew how to handle the difficult topic of biology, and to cause the teaching of German 
 philosophers and theologians to be respected.” — Professor Schoberlein, of Gottingen Uni¬ 
 versity. 
 
 “ His object is the foundation of a new and true metaphysics resting on a biological basis, 
 that is the proof of the truth of philosophical theism, and of the fundamental ideas of 
 Christianity. These intentions he carries out with a full, and occasionally with a too full, 
 application of his eminent oratorical talent, and with great sagacity and thorough 
 knowledge of the leading works in physiology for the last thirty years.” — Professor Ulrici, 
 University of Halle, Germany. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers. 
 
Boston Monday Lectures. 
 
 conscience, 
 
 WITH PRELUDES ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 J 
 
 By JOSEPH COOK. 
 
 “ Ethical science now teaches not so much that man has conscience, 
 is that conscience lias man/’ — Dorner. 
 
 TENTH EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 
 
 Camfcri&ge. 
 
 1887. 
 
Copyright, 1878, 
 
 By JOSEPH COOK. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press , Cambridge : 
 Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The object of the Boston Monday Lectures is to present the 
 results of the freshest German, English, and American scholar¬ 
 ship on the more important and difficult topics concerning the 
 relation of Religion and Science. 
 
 They were begun in the Meionaon in 1875; and the audiences, 
 gathered at noon on Mondays, were of such size as to need to be 
 transferred to Park-street Church in October, 1876, and thence to 
 Tremont Temple, which was often more than full during the win¬ 
 ter of 1876-77, and in that of 1877-78. 
 
 The audiences contained large numbers of ministers, teachers, 
 and other educated men. 
 
 The thirty-five lectures given in 1876-77 were reported in the 
 Boston Daily Advertiser, by Mr. J. E. Bacon, stenographer; and 
 most of them were republished in full in New York and Lon¬ 
 don. They are contained in the first, second, and third volumes of 
 “ Boston Monday Lectures,” entitled “ Biology,” “ Transcendent¬ 
 alism,” and “ Orthodoxy.” 
 
 The lectures on Biology oppose the materialistic, and not the 
 theistic, theory of evolution. 
 
 The lectures on Transcendentalism and Orthodoxy contain a 
 discussion of the views of Theodore Parker. 
 
 The thirty lectures given in 1877-78 were reported by Mr. Bacon, 
 for the Advertiser, and republished in full in New York and Lon¬ 
 don. They are contained in the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of 
 “Boston Monday Lectures,” entitled “ Conscience,” “Heredity,” 
 and “Marriage.” 
 
 In the present volume some of the salient points are: — 
 
 1. The definition of conscience as “ that which perceives and 
 feels rightness and obligatoriness in choices ” (p. 17). 
 
 v 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 vi 
 
 2. A fuller definition (p. 25), together with a distinction be 
 tween what conscience includes and what it implies (pp. 25-28). 
 
 3. A study (in Lectures II. and III.) of the relations of ethical 
 and biological science, or of the effect of the approval and dis¬ 
 approval of conscience upon the countenance and gesture. 
 
 4. A reply (in Lectures IV., V., and VI.) to the agnosticism of 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 5. A criticism (in Lecture VI.) of the positions of Mansel as to 
 the definitions of the infinite and absolute. 
 
 6. A consideration (in Lectures VII. and VIII.) of conscience 
 as the foundation of the religion of science. 
 
 7. A series (in Lectures IX. and X.) of literary illustrations of 
 conscience from Victor Hugo and Shakspeare. 
 
 The theory as to conscience advanced in these lectures is in gen¬ 
 eral accord with the ethical school represented by Kant, Dugald 
 Stewart, Price and Edwards, and, among later German writers, 
 by Lotze, Wutke, Hofmann, Ulrici, and Rothe. It emphasizes 
 that view of the moral faculty which materialism opposes, but 
 which is admitted to have had, from Plato’s time to the present, 
 the greatest number of scholarly adherents. The peculiarity of 
 the volume is in the use made of the most recent biological science. 
 
 A consideration of the origin of conscience will be found in the 
 lectures on Heredity. 
 
 The committee having charge of the Boston Monday Lectures 
 for the coming year consists of the following gentlemen: — 
 
 His Excellency A. H. Rice, Governor 
 of Massachusetts. 
 
 Hon. William Claflin, Ex-Governor 
 of Massachusetts. 
 
 Prof. E. P. Gould, Newton Theologi¬ 
 cal Institution. 
 
 * 
 
 Rev. William M. Baker, D.D. 
 
 Rev. William P. Warren, D.D., Bos¬ 
 ton University. 
 
 Prof. L. T. Townsend, Boston Univer¬ 
 sity. 
 
 E. M. McPherson. 
 
 Robert Gilchrist. 
 
 Prof. George Z. Grat, D.D., Episco¬ 
 pal Theological School, Cambridge. 
 
 Prof. Edwards A. Park, D.D., An. 
 
 dover Theological Seminary. 
 
 Right Rev. Bishop Paddock. 
 
 Prof. E. N. Horsford. 
 
 Hon. Alpheus Hardy. 
 
 Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D. 
 
 A. Bronson Alcott. 
 
 Russell Sturgis, Jr. 
 
 Right Rev. Bishop Foster. 
 
 Reuben Crooke. 
 
 Samuel Johnson. 
 
 William B. Merrill. 
 
 Prof. B. P. Bowne. 
 
 M. R. Deming, Secretary. 
 
 B. W. Williams, Financial Agent. 
 
 HENRY F. DURANT, Chairman 
 
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE. 
 
 In the careful reports of Mr. Cook’s Lectures printed 
 in the Boston Daily Advertiser, were included by the 
 stenographer sundry expressions (applause, &c.) indicat¬ 
 ing the immediate and varying impressions with which the 
 Lectures were received. Though these reports have been 
 thoroughly revised by the author, the publishers have 
 thought it advisable to retain these expressions. Mr. 
 Cook’s audiences included, in large numbers, representa¬ 
 tives of the broadest scholarship, the profoundest philoso¬ 
 phy, the acutest scientific research, and generally of the 
 finest intellectual culture, of Boston and New England; 
 and it has seemed admissible to allow the larger assembly 
 to which these Lectures are now addressed to know how 
 they were received by such audiences as those to which 
 thev were originally delivered. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Unexplored Remainders in Conscience ... 3 
 
 n. Solar Self-Culture.35 
 
 III. The Physical Tangibleness of the Moral 
 
 Law.61 
 
 IV. Matthew Arnold’s Views on Conscience . . 87 
 
 V. Organic Instincts in Conscience.117 
 
 VI. The First Cause as Personal.143 
 
 VII. Is Conscience Infallible ?.171 
 
 VIII. Conscience as the Foundation of the Reli¬ 
 gion of Science.201 
 
 IX. The Laughter of the Soul at Itself . • . 229 
 
 X. Shakspeare on Conscience.255 
 
 PRELUDES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Insurrections of Hunger. 5 
 
 II. Bachelor and Family Wages.35 
 
 III. English Precedents in Civil-Service Reform 61 
 
 IV. The Duties of Opulence to Missions .... 87 v 
 
 V. Enfranchised Ignorance in the South . . . 117 
 
 VI. Indigent Infidelity.143 
 
 VII. California as the Door to China.171 
 
 VIII. Free Tabernacles in Great Towns .... 201 
 
 IX. Magdalen in Cities.229 
 
 X. Young Men in Politics. 255 * 
 
 ix 
 
L 
 
 UNEXPLORED REMINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-FIRST LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 OCT. 1. 
 
Zwei Dinge erfiillen das Gemiith mit immer neuer nnd zuneh 
 mender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je ofter und anhaltender sich 
 das Nachdenken damit beschaftigt: der bestirnte Himmel iiber mir, 
 v/ und das moralische Gesetz in mir. — Kant: Sdmmtliche Werke , ed. 
 Hartenstein, v. 167. 
 
 Kant’s “two things that strike me dumb; ”—these are perceptible 
 at Konigsberg in Prussia, or at Charing Cross in London. And all 
 eyes shall yet see them better; and the heroic Few, who are the salt 
 of the earth, shall at length see them well. — Carlyle: Shooting 
 Niagara: and after? vi. 
 
CONSCIENCE. 
 
 i. 
 
 UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CON¬ 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 In the year 1877 America has seen her first, but 
 probably not her last, insurrection of hunger. Low- 
 paid labor has at least occasionally not had enough 
 to eat; and therefore a thin flame of fire burst out 
 of the hitherto rarely ruptured social soil on a line 
 extending from Baltimore to San Francisco. This 
 ominous, wavering, but intense radiance rose from a 
 fruitful, a largely unoccupied, and a monumentally 
 unoppressed country. Our cities gather to them¬ 
 selves the tramps, the roughs, and the sneaks; several 
 of them contain organized bands of emigrant com¬ 
 munists ; and this loose material caught fire when the 
 sudden flame shot up from the volcanic crevice. We 
 were not very swift in putting down the conflagra¬ 
 tion. It happens, therefore, that in a land which has 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 twice been washed in blood, and was an hundred 
 years old, society suffered painfully for several weeks, 
 from a wide-spread strike of railway laborers, a 
 riot of roughs and sneaks, and an inefficient self- 
 defence. We are all agreed that it takes two to make 
 a bargain; and even low-paid labor occasionally for¬ 
 got that first principle of social science. The chief 
 trouble came, however, not from the workingmen, 
 and not from the real princes of capital, but from 
 second-rate business managers, who hardly know how 
 to make a fortune except by cut-throat competition. 
 
 How many railways of this country are in receiv¬ 
 ers’ hands? We talk of various cures for the ills of 
 our railway strikes; but is not one of the most prac¬ 
 tical remedies a requisition by law that every railway 
 corporation, and every moneyed company that is in 
 debt and yet in receivers’ hands and in business, 
 shall be compelled to lay aside at least one per cent 
 of its income as a sinking fund to pay its debt? We 
 must in some way insist upon it, that unprincipled 
 competition shall not grind the faces of the poor. 
 Your Vanderbilt did not grind those faces. I do not 
 know that Thomas Scott did; however, I think he 
 is paid a large salary not for his knowledge of legiti¬ 
 mate railroading, but for his knowledge of illegiti¬ 
 mate railroading. No railway deserves to succeed 
 whose managers would tremble if their ledgers were 
 turned inside out and read by the whole American 
 people. Here, for instance, are two railway compa¬ 
 nies, each containing a dozen men. A majority in 
 each company secretly arrive at an understanding 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 5 
 
 with each other. They form in fact, though not in 
 name, a third company. That third collection of 
 managers owns no railroads; but it has a majority in 
 two companies that do own, perhaps, competing lines. 
 By making a ring, they can turn aside, for a time, to 
 their own uses, a very large part of the profits of 
 both these railway companies. The conspirators have 
 not a wheel, they have not a track, of their own; but 
 they put into their pockets a lion’s share of the pro¬ 
 ceeds of the companies in which they have a majority. 
 They place profits on board one car, and turn this off 
 upon a side track; and, when the train of their enter¬ 
 prise reaches the station farther on, they announce 
 that there is nothing left for the stockholders; and 
 of course, if stockholders suffer, workingmen must. 
 
 Mines and factories and railways are likely to be 
 heard of in the maturity of the American republic, 
 not as loudly, but perhaps as pointedly, as the cot¬ 
 ton-field and the rice-swamp were in its infancy. As 
 the Old World has had peril enough from industrial 
 questions to make already classic much of the litera¬ 
 ture of the conflict between labor and capital, this 
 New and young World does not act unwisely in turn¬ 
 ing attention, with all the power of American con¬ 
 scientiousness and shrewdness, upon the inquiry, 
 What are comfortable wages, and how can they be 
 paid ? Is it possible to arrive at a definition of star¬ 
 vation wages ? 
 
 Suppose that a man were to put forward the prop¬ 
 osition that any thing less than twice the cost of the 
 uncooked food for a family containing several small 
 
6 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 children is starvation wages to the unassisted fathei 
 of that family, would you think such a position very 
 heretical ? Regard for a moment the perplexities of 
 low-paid labor. After all, the pulpit has the right, 
 and the platform, — especially if it be as free as this 
 one, — at least this will take the privilege of looking 
 into the vexed arithmetic of the very poor. A man 
 has in his family a wife and three children. He 
 must therefore feed five mouths. What do you pay 
 for your board each week ? Five dollars, perhaps, 
 and it is not very good at that. What could you get 
 the bare food for, without any charges for cooking or 
 rent? Three dollars? Two and a half? Two? I 
 should not like to live and do hard work ten hours a 
 day on food that cost less than two hundred cents a 
 week, or twenty-nine cents a day. You would not. 
 But I am at the head of a family; and my wife has 
 only health enough to cook the food, and take care 
 of the children and the house. She really earns 
 nothing except in acting as a housekeeper and as a 
 mother to my children, — there are three of them, — 
 and now I must maintain five persons. Food cer¬ 
 tainly cannot keep soul and body together, and cost 
 less on the average than a dollar a week. I must 
 starve, or have five dollars a week for the uncooked 
 food of my family. How much do I earn a day ? A 
 dollar, without board. My children cannot earn any 
 thing. If I obtain work every day, I have at the 
 end of the week a dollar left to pay for rent and 
 every thing else. Is it hard times with my family ? 
 The children must have shoes, or they will be hooted 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 7 
 
 at in the street when they go to the public school. 
 America is, indeed, kind. She opens the school to the 
 poor. But I ought to be able to put shoes on the feet 
 of my children; and yet I cannot always put coats 
 on their backs, nor even can I have ragged calico for 
 my babes at times, for I have but a dollar a day, and 
 they can earn nothing, and my wife is a little ill. 
 But I must send my children to school, or I drop 
 to a lower social scale. My children ought to go 
 to church, but they have nothing to wear. I ought to 
 send my wife to church; I ought to go myself; and 
 I am not to be excused for keeping away, because it 
 would be better for me if conscientiousness were dif¬ 
 fused throughout the community, and I know that 
 one great object of the church is to diffuse conscien¬ 
 tiousness, in order that property may be safely dif¬ 
 fused. I ought to be, with my brethren of the 
 laboring class, in God’s house every sabbath day; 
 and I ought to be there with my children. But I 
 must pay five dollars a week for the food of my fam¬ 
 ily ; and I earn but a dollar a day or a little more, —• 
 some of my brethren earn but ninety cents, — and I 
 work but six days in the week. I want to get my 
 children a few school-books. I ought to take a news¬ 
 paper. There must be now and then a doctor’s bill 
 paid. I must have a little coal in the winter; and it 
 is not possible for me to buy it as the millionnaire 
 does, in great quantites: I must buy it by the bas¬ 
 ket, and my wood in little parcels. And it is hard 
 times. I have just been dropped from employment. 
 There is often not much for me to do. I cannot al 
 ways find work six days of the week. 
 
8 
 
 CONSCIENCE 
 
 Undoubtedly there are some corporations that 
 have paid as wages more than they have received as 
 profits. Workingmen have occasionally been retained 
 in place at a temporary loss to their employers. But 
 supply and demand are the law of business, and I am 
 discussing the dull average sky of low-paid labor 
 under that rule, and not the starry exceptions. 
 
 I sat in a parlor beyond the Mississippi, with two 
 leaders of business, one of them a millionnaire, and 
 the other nearly such, and we added up the necessary 
 expenses of a family of five, in which children are 
 supposed to be too young to labor remuneratively; 
 and we found that such a family could not very well 
 live through a year respectably in our climate, and 
 according to the standard of the workingmen of 
 America, if the father is their only support, and is 
 paid less than ten or twelve dollars a week. The low- 
 paid laborer often has wages that are less than six 
 hundred dollars a year. Your Massachusetts Bureau 
 of Labor in 1875 published a large collection of de¬ 
 tails from the life of families in this Commonwealth, 
 and asserted that 44 the fact stands out plainly, that 
 the recipient of a yearly wage of less than six hun¬ 
 dred dollars must get in debt.” QPub. Doc. No. 31, 
 1875, p. 380.) I know how high wages often are in 
 the ranks of skilled labor; but, as John Bright used 
 to say, 44 the nation lives in the cottage.” I under¬ 
 take to maintain here in Boston, where heresies are 
 popular, the astounding proposition, that if the un¬ 
 assisted father of a family of three children who can¬ 
 not labor remuneratively is paid no more than twice 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 9 
 
 the cost of the unprepared food for his family, he is 
 on starvation wages. 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 When Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, was a 
 poor boy and a charity-scholar in London, he was 
 one day walking along the Strand, at an hour during 
 which the streets were crowded, and was throwing 
 out his arms vigorously toward the right and the left. 
 One of his hands came into contact with a gentleman’s 
 waistcoat-pocket; and the man immediately accused 
 the boy of thievish intentions. “ No,” said Coleridge, 
 “I am not intending to pick your pocket. I am 
 swimming the Hellespont. This morning in school 
 I read the story of Hero and Leander, and I am 
 now imitating the latter as he swims from Asia to 
 Europe.” The gentleman was so much impressed 
 by the vividness of the imagination of the lad, that 
 he subscribed for Coleridge’s admission to a public 
 library, which began the poet’s education. The be¬ 
 ginning of all clearness on the multiplex topic of 
 Conscience is to make a distinction between picking 
 a pocket and swimming the Hellespont. [Applause.] 
 The external act may be precisely the same, although 
 the inner intentions differ by celestial diameters. It 
 is natural to man, however he obtained the capacity, 
 to make a distinction between meaning right and 
 meaning wrong. Not only did this gentleman and 
 the poet-boy not stop on the Strand to settle the 
 question whether the intuitional or the associational 
 theory in ethics is correct, but the urchin, coasting 
 
10 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 down the long mall of Boston Common, would not 
 stop for that purpose, were he struck by some care- 
 less coachman with the lash. He would look up, and 
 immediately ask, “ Did you mean to do that ? ” And 
 if he sees that it was the result of accident, he ex¬ 
 cuses the coachman; but if he finds that the coach¬ 
 man meant mischief, he accuses him accordingly. 
 Horace represents the children’s games at Borne, as 
 
 proceeding according to the laws of conscience . — 
 
 * 
 
 “ Pueri ludentes, Rex eris, aiunt 
 Si recte facies.” 
 
 Epist., lib. i. Ep. i. 59. 
 
 Just so the babe that cannot speak, building its card- 
 house on your parlor-carpet, will look up when you 
 trample down its castle, and ask, not verbally, but 
 by action, whether you meant to do that; and if it 
 ascertains that you did not, you will be excused; but 
 if you intended to destroy the work of the babe, that 
 untutored human constitution will re-act against you. 
 This babe, building its card-castle, has not been 
 evolved very far in human experience. It has not 
 had a long time in which to develop, by considering 
 questions of utility, a tendency to notice the differ¬ 
 ence between meaning right and meaning wrong, and 
 to make a distinction between the outward act and 
 the inner intention. However it arises, whether ac¬ 
 cording to the theory of Herbert Spencer or Alexan¬ 
 der Bain and others of their school, whom I imagine 
 sitting yonder on my left, or according to the theory 
 of Kant and Rothe and their followers, whom I 
 imagine sitting there on my right, we have here and 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 11 
 
 now, as human beings, a tendency to ask whether 
 any one who injures us means to do so, or does so* 
 accidentally; and according to the intention we judge 
 the external act. In one case it is picking the 
 pocket: in the other it is swimming the Hellespont. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 There are two schools represented by these stately 
 auditors of ours, invisible but tangible here; and 
 when I turn to Spencer and Bain on my left, I 
 find conscience called fallible, educable, vacillating. 
 John Foster, in a celebrated essay, says that, among 
 human spiritual possessions, there is nothing so ab¬ 
 surd and chimerical as conscience. It is a bundle of 
 habits. Pascal affirms that “ conscience is one thing 
 north of the Pyrenees, and another south.” We 
 have a fifth listener here, Dean Mansel, a pupil of 
 Sir William Hamilton, and who built on the only 
 boggy acre of his master’s generally sound terri¬ 
 tories. Even he asks incredulously how conscience 
 obtains the right to rule the other faculties. (Man¬ 
 sel, Limits of Religious Thought.') But if I turn to 
 Immanuel Kant, I find him uttering the amazing 
 proposition, that “ an erring conscience is a chimera.” 
 There is no such thing. ( Tugendlelire , ix. 38.) I ask 
 Rothe yonder what he says about that statement, and 
 he bows assent to the whole of it. ( Theol . Ethick, 
 ii. 29.) I cross the German Sea to Scotland, and 
 enter the parlor of Professor Calderwood, teacher of 
 ethics in the university at Edinburgh, where Sir 
 William Hamilton taught, and that scholar is put¬ 
 ting Kant’s proposition, that an erring conscience is 
 
12 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 a chimera, into the foreground of his last work. 
 (.Handbook of Moral Philosophy , p. 81.) Fichte 
 supposed himself to have annihilated the doctrine 
 that there can be any such thing as an erring con¬ 
 science. (, Sittenlehre , iv. 227.) Stuart Mill sits 
 yonder, and Rothe here looks Stuart Mill in the 
 eyes; and as I gaze into their faces, I do not find 
 that Rothe and Fichte and Kant are as likely to be 
 looked out of countenance as Mill and Spencer. 
 
 Nevertheless there must be some way of explain¬ 
 ing the difference between these honest men. We 
 have the same debates among ourselves. We are 
 accustomed to affirm that conscience has something 
 divine in it; and that which is divine does not mis¬ 
 lead us, does it ? But we say also that conscience is 
 not infallible; it is erring. The Bible itself speaks 
 of conscience as seared, blunted, and blinded. We 
 have Scriptural warrant for saying that the con¬ 
 science may be seared as with a hot iron. And yet 
 the Bible does speak of a Light that lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world, and that in the 
 beginning was with God, and was God. Can that 
 be seared with a hot iron ? Can God be blinded ? 
 Plainly there are two doctrines in the Scriptures on 
 this subject, or rather two points of view. These op¬ 
 posing schools are not defending propositions that 
 really contradict each other. They stand at different 
 points of vision; and so the different popular ideas 
 concerning conscience are apparently self-contradic¬ 
 tions, because we do not notice that they are taken 
 up from opposing outlooks. 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 13 
 
 Whenever you find yourself in a mental fog, at¬ 
 tend to the duty of definition. 
 
 What is conscience ? It was my fortune to spend 
 the first three months after the close of three years’ 
 theological study, alone on Andover hill, with the use 
 there of the best theological library in New England. 
 I had had the usual professional instruction in reli¬ 
 gious science; but to my humiliation I must confess 
 that when I asked myself what I meant by con¬ 
 science, it was impossible for me to give a distinct 
 definition. Rothe, in the last edition of his occasion¬ 
 ally eccentric but really great work on Theological 
 Ethics (sect. 177, anm. 3), carries his disaffection 
 with the term conscience so far as to exclude it 
 from his volumes altogether as scientifically inadmis¬ 
 sible and devoid of accurately determined logical 
 contents. I had been authorized to teach such as 
 were foolish enough to listen a few propositions 
 concerning religious truth; but I could not define 
 conscience. I set myself to work, and it was nine 
 days before any adequate light dawned upon that 
 point. What I am now to put before you I have 
 often tested by putting it before scholars, and I do 
 not know that an essential syllable of it has ever 
 failed to receive indorsement. Nevertheless I ask 
 no man to adopt my theory of the moral sense; I 
 am speaking here, as always, not to scholars, and 
 not to teachers of religious science who honor us 
 with their presence, but to the average inquirer; to 
 the person who, beginning to think for himself, finds 
 that he must, first of all, learn how to think, and 
 
14 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 that, on many a great topic, he needs to know what 
 has survived in the struggles of scholars with each 
 other, age after age, and to know this from men who 
 have time to examine the record. 
 
 1. Conscience, according to the loose popular idea 
 of it, is the soul’s sense of right and wrong. 
 
 2. Conscience, according to the strict scholarly 
 idea of it, is the soul’s sense of right and wrong in 
 its moral motives, that is, in its choices and inten¬ 
 tions. 
 
 3. On the one hand, it is clear that conscience, 
 defined in the loose popular way, as only the sense of 
 right and wrong, implicitly includes the action of the 
 judgment as well as of the moral perceptions and 
 feelings. 
 
 4. Since judgment is fallible, conscience, defined 
 as a spiritual multiplex, including both the moral 
 sense and the judgment, is fallible, and may justly 
 be spoken of as often blinded, erring, and seared. 
 
 5. A still greater fault in the loose popular defini¬ 
 tion is that it makes no explicit distinction between 
 the outer act and the inner intention. 
 
 6. The conscience, according to this definition, is 
 supposed to be a compound of faculties by which we 
 decide on what is called the rightness or wrongness 
 of external acts, and as such is, of course, doubly 
 fallible, and may with scientific justice be pro¬ 
 nounced erring, vacillating, and often self-contradic¬ 
 tory. 
 
 7. On the other hand, if conscience be defined in 
 the strict scholarly way, as the soul’s sense of right 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 15 
 
 and wrong in the sphere of its own intentions, the 
 judgment or purely intellectual activity of the soul is 
 distinguished from the moral perception and feelings, 
 and, therefore, in this definition, does not constitute 
 a fallible factor in conscience. 
 
 8. A man does infallibly know whether he means 
 right or wrong in any deliberate choice. 
 
 9. If, therefore, conscience be supposed to be, as 
 the strict definition describes it, the soul’s sense of 
 right and wrong in its own choices and intentions, 
 and in those only, conscience is infallible within its 
 field. 
 
 10. In this sense and in that field, conscience is 
 not educable. 
 
 11. It- follows from this definition, that right and 
 wrong, strictly understood, belong only to choices 
 and to intentions as including choices. “ Nothing,” 
 says Kant, “ can possibly be conceived in the world, 
 or even out of it, which can be called good, without 
 qualification, except a good will.” QGlrundlegung, 
 Sect. 1.) 
 
 12. External acts, taken wholly apart from the in¬ 
 tentions which led to them, have only expediency or 
 inexpediency, usefulness or harmfulness; and their 
 character in these respects is ascertained by the judg¬ 
 ment and not by the conscience. 
 
 18. If, however, we employ the loose definitions of 
 conscience, there is an important distinction to be 
 made between absolute and relative right. Absolute 
 right is the conformity of the action of a free moral 
 agent to the fitness of things as they are; relative 
 
16 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 right is the conformity of our choices and intentions 
 to the fitness of things, as, with the best light within 
 our reach, we believe them to be. Conscience points 
 out to a man the relative right; that is, the good and 
 evil in his intentions. 
 
 14. When we are about to form an intention, con¬ 
 science looks forward, and perceives its character; 
 when we form it, conscience points out its nature as 
 good or bad; after we have executed it, conscience 
 does the same. 
 
 15. Conscience is thus antecedent, concurrent, and 
 subsequent, in relation to every act of choice. 
 
 16. It is demonstrable that before and without the 
 verdict of the judgment as to what the external re¬ 
 sults of an intended act will be, conscience approves 
 or condemns the intention as in its own nature good 
 or bad. 
 
 17. All languages make a distinction, as does con¬ 
 science, between the right and the expedient, the 
 right and the prudent, the right and the advanta¬ 
 geous. 
 
 18. But conscience not only perceives the differ¬ 
 ence between a good intention and a bad: it feels 
 that the good intention ought, and that the bad ought 
 
 * not, to be adopted and carried out. 
 
 19. It is demonstrable that conscience inflicts re¬ 
 morse for an evil choice taken alone, or for a bad 
 intention formed but not carried out. 
 
 20. Every intention has two sides, — rightness or 
 its opposite, and obligatoriness or its opposite. 
 
 21. The former distinction is perceived, the latter 
 felt. 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 17 
 
 22. Conscience, therefore, may be briefly and pro¬ 
 visionally defined as a faculty including both a per¬ 
 ception and a feeling, — a perception of right and 
 wrong in the nature of choices and intentions; and a 
 feeling that right ought , and wrong ought not , to be 
 carried out by the will. Conscience is that which 
 perceives and feels rightness and obligatoriness in 
 choices. 
 
 Such is the definition with which we set out on a 
 course of thought in which it is hoped there may be 
 discussed John Stuart Mill’s views, Herbert Spen¬ 
 cer’s, Matthew Arnold’s, as well as Kant’s and Rothe’s 
 and Butler’s, or the entire conflict between the asso- 
 ciational and the intuitional, and between the latter 
 and the pantheistic theory, concerniDg the loftiest of 
 the faculties possessed by man. At the close of the 
 enlargements and verifications of these propositions 
 which are to come in subsequent lectures, there will 
 be inferences of a sort which I hope will do some¬ 
 thing to blanch the cheeks of unscientific thoughtless¬ 
 ness. Everywhere we are to proceed according to 
 the principles of inductive science. We are to ask, 
 What are the facts in man’s inmost life, and what its 
 relations to the nature of things? We are to infer 
 from uncontroverted facts concerning the moral 
 sense, what its nature is. We are to judge it by its 
 effects. I am not asking you, in any thing I have 
 thus far put before you, to accept Mill’s theory, or 
 Rothe’s, Herbert Spencer’s, or Kant’s. I am assert¬ 
 ing here and now only that a distinction is to be 
 made between external acts and inner intentions, and 
 
 i 
 
18 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 that the peculiar prerogative of conscience is to tell 
 us what is right or wrong within the sphere of inten¬ 
 tions. 
 
 You notice that I have admitted the propriety of 
 all our popular, and of course of all the Scriptural 
 language, concerning the possibility that the con¬ 
 science may be seared with a hot iron; but I insist 
 also that there is in us an original capacity to judge 
 of the difference between right and wrong intentions, 
 and that as clearly as we see that the whole is greater 
 than a part, we see that meaning right is something 
 different from meaning wrong. 
 
 There are ethical axioms, as there are mathematical 
 axioms; and if exact research establishes axioms in 
 ethics, you will know how to build on them after the 
 pattern shown in the Mount. In the mysteries of 
 man’s moral nature there is a Mount that burneth 
 yet as with fire, and that cannot be touched, and 
 which, if we could see it in its unexplored remain¬ 
 ders, we should ask to have screened from us, for no 
 man ever passed forty days and forty nights there 
 without coming down with such a glory on his face 
 as to need a veil. 
 
 In spite of the distinctions which I have indicated, 
 you say that it is not clear that judgment is not con¬ 
 cerned in determining whether a motive or intention 
 is right or wrong. When I was in Syria, I saw many 
 strange fruits, and could occasionally pluck down a 
 pomegranate, and look at it, weigh it in my hand, 
 notice its subtle fragrance, and finally taste it. Now, 
 no doubt the intellectual faculties do pluck down 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 19 
 
 motives from the tree Igdrasil, and no doubt we 
 stand as lawyers before the court of conscience, and 
 make pleas, often very mischievous ones. It is be¬ 
 yond controversy that the judgment is a fallible fac¬ 
 ulty, and that I do weigh the Igdrasil pomegranate 
 in the intellectual hand, and that it does bring the 
 fruit to the lips; but it is only the tongue that tastes 
 the pomegranate. By an intellectual act, we bring 
 the motive clearly before conscience, and conscience 
 perceives its flavor* It is not the fingers that taste 
 the strange fruit. The eyes know nothing of flavor. 
 There is no sense possessed by man by which the 
 flavor of the pomegranate can be ascertained, except 
 that which rests in the tongue. Without the sense of 
 taste, there is no perception of flavors; without con¬ 
 science, there is no perception of the difference be¬ 
 tween right and wrong. Neither in the former nor 
 in the latter case can perception be acquired. A 
 being without conscience, however highly endowed 
 intellectually, cannot be taught to feel the distinction 
 between what ought to be and what ought not to be. 
 We do not reason with the Corliss engine, to teach 
 it that it should plunge its pistons regularly. 
 
 We can imagine a being possessed of the intel¬ 
 lectual equipment of the Aristotles and Bacons, or 
 the executive ability of the Napoleons and Caesars, 
 and yet without a perception of the difference be¬ 
 tween right and wrong. We can picture to ourselves 
 a creature possessed of that perception and yet without 
 any feeling, when right has been seen , that it ought to be 
 followed; but neither popular nor scientific language 
 
20 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 would permit us to say that such a being has a con¬ 
 science. This crucial fact shows that the moral sense 
 must be made to include both a perception and a feel¬ 
 ing ; but the latter may be weak, and conscience yet 
 exist. 
 
 I define conscience a? that withir. us which not 
 only perceives what is right in moral motives, but 
 also feels that what is right ought to be chosen by 
 the will. You may be puzzled by the question 
 whether conscience is not sometimes inoperative or 
 dead. I know that this feeling that what is right 
 ought to be followed, may have greater or less force; 
 but the perception that there is a distinction between 
 right and wrong in intentions, or between meaning to 
 do well and meaning to do ill, I hold is clear in every 
 man down to the limits of sanity; and that, although 
 the magnetic needle may not always be followed, al¬ 
 though the crew may be crazy and not look at the 
 card, there is in the needle a power that makes it 
 point to the north whenever it is balanced on a hair 
 point, and allowed to move without fetters. 
 
 A man does infallibly know whether he means to 
 be mean or not, and he does infallibly feel mean 
 whenever he means to be mean. 
 
 We are so made that the distinction between right 
 and wrong in the sphere of intentions is as evident 
 to us in moral action as the superiority in size of a 
 whole over a part is in the sphere of mathematics. 
 
 I beg Mr. Mill’s pardon: I am not using the word 
 intuitive, which he dislikes and which Kant honors. 
 Here and now I insist on nothing more than the 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 21 
 
 proposition that self-evident truths are the basis of 
 mathematics, and that self-evident truths are the 
 basis of ethics, and that we perceive all such truths 
 directly. They are matters of supreme certainty. 
 There is a difference between the right hand and the 
 left in the soul’s choices among moral motives, and 
 men are as sure concerning that as they are concern¬ 
 ing the proposition that every change must have an 
 adequate cause. Distinguish, then, between the 
 fingers that pluck down the fruit, or the intellectual 
 faculties that discuss intentions, and the peculiar 
 sense that tastes them. [Applause.] I may almost 
 define conscience as the tongue that tastes the flavor 
 of intentions. [Applause.] 
 
 Conscience is an original faculty, although in 
 activity it draws the other faculties of the soul into 
 its service. Taste, or the power of perceiving the 
 beautiful, is an original faculty; but it uses all the 
 other faculties. So memory is an original faculty; 
 but its activity implies the action of many other 
 faculties. The power to appreciate the ludicrous is 
 an original faculty; and its activity, like that of con¬ 
 science, implies the exercise of both perception and 
 feeling. There is no more reason for calling con¬ 
 science a merely composite power, or simply the 
 entire list of human faculties applied to moral truth, 
 than for calling taste a composite power, or simply 
 the entire list of the faculties applied to the laws of 
 beauty. At the last analysis of taste and memory, 
 and the power to perceive the ludicrous, each is 
 found to have a separate peculiar function of its 
 own; and so has the moral faculty. 
 
22 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Moral discernment differs from merely intellectual 
 discernment in that the former is, and the latter is 
 not, necessarily followed by a feeling of obligation. 
 The discernment of the ludicrous differs from merely 
 intellectual perception in that the former is, and the 
 latter is not, necessarily followed by the feeling which 
 prompts to laughter. A similar contrast exists 
 between the perception of the beautiful and merely 
 intellectual perception. There is a region of the 
 soul in which perception and emotion appear to be 
 inseparably blended, and to constitute one faculty, as 
 two elements unite in water, which is yet but one 
 substance. This region, as Sir William Hamilton 
 has remarked, yet needs a nomenclature. 
 
 Whatever the origin of our powers of taste and 
 memory and wit, each is here in human nature; 
 and so is conscience. As Sidgwick has remarked 
 (Methods of Ethics , London, 1877, second ed. p. vi.), 
 the teacher of ethics is no more called on to inves¬ 
 tigate at the outset of his discussions the origin of 
 conscience than the geometer to investigate the 
 origin of those perceptions as to space and time 
 upon which geometry and arithmetic are built. 
 Under the topic of Heredity (see vol. v. of the 
 Boston Monday Lectures ), it is my purpose to discuss 
 the origin of conscience; but here and now I exhibit 
 the faculty only as an inalienable portion of balanced 
 human nature, like memory or the perception of the 
 ludicrous, or the sense of the beautiful. 
 
 The chief advances of science have come from 
 th3 study of unexplored remainders. We have in 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 23 
 
 conscience a perception of the distinction between 
 right and wrong in moral motives. But what lies 
 behind that perception ? The difference exists in the 
 nature of things, apparently. But what is meant by 
 the nature of things ? There is in conscience a feel¬ 
 ing that we ought to follow what we perceive to be a 
 right moral motive, and ought not to follow what we 
 perceive to be a bad one. But what lies behind the 
 terrific weight of the word ought ? 
 
 Take the single syllable ought, and weigh it, my 
 surprising sceptical friends, and do so according to 
 the sternest rules of the scientific method. How are 
 we to ascertain what this word weighs, unless it be 
 by experiment ? What experiment shall we try with 
 it, if it be not that of weighing over against it some¬ 
 thing very heavy ? What shall we weigh against 
 the one word ought? Here is a soldier with an 
 empty sleeve. There was a day when the question 
 arose, whether he ought to go to the front in the war. 
 He had to maintain father and mother; and the 
 word home is supposed to be a very weighty one. 
 Heavier than the word father or mother is the word 
 wife. He weighed that word and the others with 
 :t against the one word ought; and father and 
 mother and wife went up in the scale, and ought went 
 down, and he went to the front. Is ought scientifi¬ 
 cally known to weigh anything? Here is another 
 soldier who had father, mother, wife, and children, 
 to weigh against that insignificant syllable; and he 
 weighed them, in the mornings and the noons — 
 in both the sacred twilights, as they say in India — 
 
24 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and in the midnights. Father, mother, wife, and 
 children were words to which he allowed their full 
 weight. He was the only support of his family, but 
 the one word ought again and again carried up the 
 weight of these weightiest contradicting syllables. 
 What if this soldier and that could have put into 
 the left-hand scale all that men value in wealth and 
 honor or reputation ? I will not suppose the word 
 honor to have any other meaning than reputation, 
 for I cannot weigh ought against ought; and a man 
 ought to maintain his honor. We must not be so 
 unscientific as to weigh a thing against itself. But 
 we put in here, outward standing among men, and 
 wealth, and life. If you please, sum up the globes as 
 so much silver and the suns as so much gold, and 
 cast the hosts of heaven as diamonds on a necklace, 
 into one scale, and if there is not in it any part of 
 the word ought — if ought is absent in the one scale, 
 and-present in the other — up will go your scale 
 laden with the universe, as a crackling paper scroll is 
 carried aloft in a conflagration ascending toward the 
 stars. [Applause.] Is it not both a curious and an 
 appalling fact, this weight of the word ought — and 
 yet a fact absolutely undeniable? Where is the 
 materialist or the pantheist who dares assert that I 
 am making this syllable too heavy? You may weigh 
 against that word every thing but God, and it will 
 outweigh all but himself. I cannot imagine God 
 weighed against ought. Precisely here is the ex¬ 
 planation of a mystery. God is in the word ought, 
 and therefore it outweighs all but God. [Applause.] 
 There is youi first unexplored remainder. 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 25 
 
 But, my friends, we must be analytical in order to 
 be brief. 
 
 I. Conscience in full activity includes, — 
 
 (1) A direct perception of right and wrong in 
 choices. 
 
 (2) A feeling that right ought and that wrong 
 ought not to be performed. 
 
 (3) Complacency in the right, and displacency in 
 the wrong. 
 
 (4) A sense of personal merit in the performance 
 of the right, and of personal demerit in the perform¬ 
 ance of the wrong. 
 
 (5) A delight or pain, bliss or remorse, according 
 as the choices are right or wrong. 
 
 (6) A prophetic anticipation of reward for the 
 performance of right, and of punishment for the per¬ 
 formance of wrong. 
 
 The fundamental proof that conscience in full ac¬ 
 tivity exhibits the six special methods of action here 
 named is to be found in accurate observation of what 
 takes place in our own mental and moral experience. 
 
 II. An important distinction exists between what 
 conscience includes and what it implies. 
 
 (1) A direct perception of the freedom of the 
 will is not one of the activities of conscience; but 
 the fact of such freedom is a necessary inference by 
 a single step of reasoning from the sense which con¬ 
 science gives us of personal merit and demerit; for it 
 is self-evident that these can be the qualities of only 
 voluntary action. 
 
 (2) A direct perception of the fact of the Divine 
 
26 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 existence is not one of the activities of conscience; 
 but the fact is a necessary inference by a single step 
 of reasoning from the perception of a moral law 
 and the sense of obligation to it included in con¬ 
 science. The moral law, of which the existence is 
 proclaimed in the very structure of conscience, and 
 so is spiritually tangible by conscience, is an Eternal 
 Somewhat not ourselves which makes for righteous¬ 
 ness. But the Plan in that Somewhat is a thought, 
 and there cannot be thought without a thinker; and 
 so the Somewhat, in all the high activities of con¬ 
 science in connection with the intellectual faculty, is 
 recognized as a Some One. This recognition is so 
 necessary and universal that the fact of the Divine 
 existence has often been called a strictly intuitive 
 truth, and the assertion made that conscience and the 
 soul’s consciousness of God are one. 
 
 (3) A direct perception of the fact that a future 
 state of personal existence awaits man is not one 
 of the activities of conscience, but is an inference 
 from the prophetic anticipations irresistibly asserting 
 themselves in conscience, that reward and punish¬ 
 ment await him beyond death; and also, according 
 to Kant, from the demand which conscience makes 
 for the soul’s absolute perfection, and the practically 
 necessary condition of a duration adequate to the 
 complete fulfilment of the moral law. 
 
 It is well known that Kant makes the freedom of 
 the will, the fact of the divine existence, and that 
 of immortality, postulates, that is, presuppositions, 
 of conscience, and asserts that “ the truth of these 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 27 
 
 ideas no sophistry will ever wrest from the convic¬ 
 tion of even the commonest man.” (.Dialectic of 
 Pure Practical Reason , vi.) 
 
 III. The effects of conscience arise Doth from 
 what it includes and from what it implies. 
 
 Among the effects resulting from both these 
 sources are : — 
 
 (1) A sense of an approval or disapproval from a 
 Divine Somewhat or Some One not ourselves, ac- 
 cording as we are influenced by good or bad inten¬ 
 tions. 
 
 (2) A bliss or a pain, each capable of being, at its 
 height, the acutest known to the soul; the former 
 arising when what ought to be has been done, and 
 the latter when what ought not; and the two alter¬ 
 nating or acquiring final permanence according as 
 our approval or disapproval of ourselves, and our 
 feeling of our approval or disapproval by a Divine 
 Somewhat or Some One not ourselves, alternate or 
 acquire final permanence. 
 
 (3) A prophetic anticipation that both our approval 
 and disapproval by ourselves and by a Divine Some¬ 
 what or Some One not ourselves are to continue 
 beyond death, and to have consequences affecting us 
 there as personal existences. 
 
 (4) An authority, imperativeness, and inner neces¬ 
 sity, arising from a source in us, and yet not of us, 
 and against which, in the activities of conscience, 
 the will and all the human faculties are utterly 
 powerless. 
 
 In these three propositions and their subdivisions, 
 
28 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 I venture to summarize my definition of conscience. 
 If we put into the definition of the moral sense not 
 only all it includes, but all it implies, we overload 
 the definition, and accurate psychological observation 
 will not justify our analysis. This is the fault of 
 many mystical definitions. On the other hand, if, in 
 our description of conscience, we do not take into 
 view what it implies, as well as what it includes, our 
 account of the moral sense is not true to the facts 
 of life : it is cold, inadequate, and palpably unscien¬ 
 tific. This is the fault of many rationalistic descrip¬ 
 tions. 
 
 The novel point in the definition and description 
 of conscience here attempted is the distinction be¬ 
 tween what conscience includes and what it implies. 
 The activities of conscience and the effects of con¬ 
 science are to be distinguished from each other in 
 that the former contain only what the organic actions 
 of the faculty include, while the latter result from 
 both what those actions include and what they imply. 
 
 Only he who takes into view both what the activi¬ 
 ties of the moral faculty include, and what they 
 imply, can have any proper conception of the awe 
 and mystery and might of conscience. 
 
 In the preliminary definition I have used the word 
 sense ; for that may mean either a perception or feel - 
 ing , and conscience includes both a perception of 
 rightness, and a feeling of oughtness. This latter 
 word is in standard use in the Scottish philosophy. 
 “ It is not plainer,” said Richard Price (. Review , 
 chap. 6), “ that figure implies something figured, 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 29 
 
 solidity resistance, or an effect a cause, than it is 
 that rightness implies oughtness.” (See also Cal- 
 DERWOOD, Handbook of Moral Science.') Butler 
 taught that so far from conscience being a per¬ 
 ception or a feeling alone, “ it probably includes 
 both.” I am aware how much I venture in giving 
 a definition of a term as to the full meaning of which 
 there is up to this hour only too little agreement 
 among experts. (See Hofmann, Das Grewissen , 
 Leipzig, 1866; the best recent German work on Con¬ 
 science.) 
 
 From the dawn of ethical investigation, fragments 
 of the definition of conscience now given have been 
 appearing, although they have rarely been combined 
 into a self-consistent whole. 
 
 Butler confines the action of conscience to the 
 sphere of intentions: “ Will and design constitute the 
 very nature of actions as such, and they are the object, 
 and the only one, of the approving and disapproving 
 faculty.” (On the Nature of Virtue , Diss. II.) He 
 describes, though he does not discuss, its prophetic 
 office: “ Conscience without being consulted, with¬ 
 
 out being advised with, magisterially exerts itself, 
 and if not forcibly stopped naturally and always of 
 course goes on to anticipate a higher and more effec¬ 
 tual sentence, which shall hereafter second and affirm 
 its own.” ( On Human Nature , Sermon II.) 
 
 The most elaborate recent treatise in German on 
 conscience defines it as “a fixed readiness (coming 
 into activity with inner necessity in a given act of 
 will) to institute a comparison between the given act 
 
30 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 of will and a law as standard in the same instant with 
 the act of will, touching us from outside ourselves, 
 and unconditionally claiming for itself authority.” 
 (Hofmann, Das G-ewissen , p. 83.) 
 
 Here and now I use the numbered propositions of 
 thi# discussion only as the outline which this lecture 
 is intended to draw in bold contours; and I leave 
 you to take the point of view of practical philosophy, 
 without asking you to decide to-day between the 
 Mills and the Spencers on the one hand and the 
 Kants and the Rothes on the other. These two sets 
 of listeners will indorse these propositions as state¬ 
 ments true to human nature. There is within us 
 the power of perceiving the difference between right 
 and wrong in the sphere of intentions. We have a 
 feeling that the right ought to be followed, and that 
 the wrong ought not to be. We have a sense of 
 merit and demerit, or of approval and of disapproval 
 of ourselves. Our instincts assure us that there is 
 an approval or disapproval above our own. We 
 have a bliss or pain, according as we feel this ap¬ 
 proval or disapproval from ourselves, and from 
 Somewhat or Some One not ourselves. Lastly, 
 there is in conscience a prophetic office, by which 
 we anticipate that consequences, closely concerning 
 us as conscious personal existences, will follow 
 us beyond death. In all these particulars con¬ 
 science acts without the consent of the will. It 
 puts forth its activities by a mysterious inner neces¬ 
 sity, which although in us is not of us. It claims for 
 itself, therefore, in the constitution of man uncon- 
 
UNEXPLORED REMAINDERS IN CONSCIENCE. 31 
 
 ditional supremacy. “ Had it strength as it had 
 right,” says Bishop Butler, “had it power as it had 
 manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the 
 world.” ( On Human Nature , Sermon II.) 
 
 I defy any student of the laws of the human soul 
 as recorded in the unpartisan record of the languages 
 and literatures of all the nations, or any man who 
 will be faithful to the scientific method in the intro¬ 
 spective study of his own experience, or any can¬ 
 did and clear thinker, to deny, in the name of induc¬ 
 tive science, the existence in the moral faculty of 
 either of the seven traits here ascribed to it. 
 
 Think of the unexplored remainders beyond each 
 one of the ascertained scientific facts concerning 
 Conscience. Where is the seat of that Authority 
 which speaks in the mysterious but wholly undeni¬ 
 able weight of the word ought ? Where now is He 
 who is the Light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world, and that in the beginning 
 was with God and was God ? There are men who 
 do not perceive the absolutely unfathomable glory 
 of Christianity either as a philosophy or as a life, 
 and who ask vaguely where He is who spoke once as 
 never man spake, and since has governed the cen¬ 
 turies ? Where is He whose pierced right hand lifted 
 heathenism off its hinges, and turned into another 
 channel the dolorous and accursed ages ? To me, 
 too, on humble and struggling paths in the valleys 
 of thought, as well as to your Kants and your 
 Rothes, aloft there where the sky-kissed peaks of 
 research gaze upon the coming sun, the sublimest 
 
32 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 as well as the most organizing and redemptive truth 
 of exact ethical science is the identity of the moral 
 law and the Divine Nature. Wherever the moral 
 law acts, there Christianity finds the personal omni¬ 
 presence of Him whom we dare not name,— Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost; Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier; 
 One God, who was, and is, and is to come. At this 
 miraculous hour, the Light that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world is, not was. It is scien¬ 
 tifically known that this Light has its temple in 
 Conscience. But it has been proclaimed for ages by 
 Christianity that God is One, and that our Lord is as 
 personally present in every breath of the Holy Spirit 
 in the latest days, as he was in that breath which he 
 breathed on his disciples when he said, “ Receive ye 
 the Holy Ghost.” Our cheeks may well grow white 
 and the blood of the ages leap with a new inspiration, 
 when, standing between Christianity and science, we 
 find the thunders of the one and the whispers of the 
 other uttering the same truth. • It is a familiar doc¬ 
 trine to Christianity, that our bodies are the temple 
 of Somewhat and Some One not ourselves. That 
 Some One Christianity does, although physical science 
 does not, know by an Incommunicable Name. There 
 are connections between religion and science here of 
 the most overawing moment; and in the whole field 
 of the truth concerning Conscience they are the 
 vastest unexplored remainders. [Applause.] 
 
IL 
 
 SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-SECOND LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 OCT. 8. 
 
Das Gesicht eines Menschen sagt in der Regel mehr und inte- 
 ressanteres als sein Mund. Aucl ipricht der Mund nur Gedanken 
 eines Menschen, das Gesicht einen Gedanken der Natur aus.— 
 Schopenhauer: Pcvrerga und Paralepomena, ii. 509. 
 
 Ben discerneva in lor la testa bionda; 
 
 Ma nella facce l’occhio si smarria, 
 
 Come virtu ch’a troppo si confonda. 
 
 Dante: Purgatorio, viii. 34. 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 Whoever becomes an incendiary or an assassin 
 in the conflict between labor and capital, let him 
 suffer the full penalty of the law, whether he be a 
 millionnaire or a Molly Maguire. [Applause.] The 
 riffraff rioter, the petroleum Communist, the fire- 
 bottle loafer, are enemies of the human race; and if 
 they defy the law, a republic must treat them with 
 that kind of mercy which Napoleon showed toward 
 the original Communists of Paris, when he closed 
 the French Revolution by a whiff of grape-shot. 
 Asked to account for the splintering of the Church 
 of St. Roche, he said, “ It is false that we fired first 
 with blank charge: it had been a waste of life to do 
 that.*’ As a republican of the American, and not of 
 the Red or Communistic species, I passed in Paris 
 some thankful moments, leaning against the rabbets 
 and plinths of St. Roche Church, which show splin¬ 
 tered by that shot to this hour. 
 
 The American lower ranks contain three different 
 
 sets of men — the unenterprising, the unfortunate, 
 
 35 
 
36 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and the unprincipled. The shiftlessness of the un* 
 enterprising sometimes needs the spur of hunger. It 
 is good political action, as well as good morals, to 
 insist that if any man will not work, neither shall he 
 eat. The unfortunate who are not unprincipled will 
 not long remain unfortunate. Our civilization, 
 therefore, will need to concern itself chiefly with 
 those who are really without aspiration or principle 
 enough to occupy their opportunities of rising in 
 American society. Hampden and Cromwell, Adams 
 and Washington, have made it possible for any one 
 to rise in the United States who has the strength 
 and the will to do so. If any one does not rise, it 
 must be because he lacks either energy or principle. 
 “ I began with twenty-five cents,” said a millionnaire 
 to his discontented workingmen on the Mississippi 
 last summer, “ and every one of you has the same 
 opportunity.” That was a distinctively American 
 speech. Commonly the cripples and the roughs, the 
 very unfortunate and the utterly unprincipled, are at 
 the bottom of society in democratic great cities. 
 
 The lower classes abroad are composed very differ¬ 
 ently from the American. Dives and Lazarus in the 
 Old World have, and here they have not, hereditary 
 positions. The mobility of our society is such that 
 Dives or his sons may sink to the position of Lazarus, 
 and Lazarus or his sons may rise to the position of 
 Di ves. We have no law of primogeniture. We 
 have no inherited or artificial social rank. The sons 
 of the poor and the rich easily change positions. 
 It follows, from this fact, that the cause of the rich 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 37 
 
 man in America is every man’s cause. A man is a 
 man, even if his father was rich. But it follows 
 also, from the same fact, that the cause of the poor 
 man is every man’s cause. A man is a man, even if 
 his father was poor. 
 
 “ For a’ that, and a’ that, 
 
 A man’s a man for a’ that.” 
 
 But if a man will work, shall he eat ? There is a 
 distinction to he made between family wages and 
 bachelor wages. At the bottom of the collisions of 
 labor and capital, which caused ten cities in America 
 to listen not long ago to volleys of sharp shot, 
 was the competition of bachelor wages with family 
 wages. John here has a dollar and a half a day, and 
 can barely support his family. James yonder has 
 no work, and h a bachelor, and, of course, is willing 
 to labor for eighty cents a day. Vanderbilt says 
 he could have manned all his railways by paying 
 only eighty cents a day for labor. James comes to 
 John, and says, “ There is a strike, and you are un¬ 
 willing to labor for eighty cents a day; but I am 
 willing, and will take your place.” John replies, 
 “ James, if you do that, I will kill you.” James says, 
 “If you shoot me, the soldiers will shoot you.” John 
 answers, “ I will stop the trains, and you shall not 
 run them.” He is as good as his word. That is 
 what it is: a conflict between bachelor wages and 
 family wages. The soldiers appear when the roughs 
 and the sneaks begin to fire round-houses and trains. 
 The workingmen did not intend to burn up valua- 
 
38 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 bles; but they meant to keep ill-paid labor from out* 
 bidding them in a competition which was reducing 
 wages. Their mode of doing this was to stop rail¬ 
 way traffic, — no doubt a most suicidal as well as 
 criminal procedure. Low-paid labor forgot two 
 things: first, that it takes two to make a bargain; 
 and, second, that it is not one of the rights of labor 
 to prevent labor. 
 
 When two representatives of the workingmen — 
 family wages on one side and bachelor wages on the 
 other — come thus into collision in the youth, or 
 rather in the infancy of the Republic, the sign is talk¬ 
 ative about much yet to come in the maturity of our 
 land. There is a hope possessed by many, that the 
 collisions between capital and labor may, in America, 
 be settled by reason, and not by force, and settled, 
 not according to the ideas of capital on the one 
 hand, nor according to those of labor on the other. 
 Force, in the riots of the Communists in Paris, set¬ 
 tled the question for a while on the side of petroleum 
 roughs and sneaks, or the unprincipled portion of 
 the lower classes. In some other parts of Europe, 
 hereditary position and wealth and absolute govern¬ 
 ment have settled the question with equal injustice 
 by force, although with less noise, and on the side of 
 capital. If, in America, this question can have fair 
 discussion from the friends of both labor and capital; 
 if, as is perhaps not easily possible, the question can 
 be kept out of the hands of political demagogism 
 [applause] ; if it can be lifted up early to a plane of 
 thought substantially Christian, — then America, in 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 39 
 
 settling the question for herself, will assuredly help 
 much to settle it for the world. 
 
 “ When a deed is done for freedom, through the broad earth’s 
 aching breast 
 
 Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west; 
 And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him 
 climb 
 
 To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
 
 Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of time.” 
 
 Lowell : The Present Crisis. 
 
 One full blossom has appeared on the American 
 branch of the tree Igdrasil, in the abolition of slavery; 
 perhaps an hundred years hence the time will be ripe 
 for the appearing of another blossom in the peace 
 able settlement of the conflicts between labor and 
 capital. [Applause.] 
 
 But when John refuses to allow James to take his 
 place at eighty cents a day, John has his children in 
 mind. What are comfortable wages ? If starvation 
 wages were correctly defined in a previous discussion, 
 shall we not ask, with sharp attention, What are nat¬ 
 ural or just wages ? My proposition, which I do not 
 ask any one to defend, is that just wages will not vio¬ 
 late the rights of children and of old age. By this I 
 mean that whoever is willing to labor physically the 
 legal number of hours a day should be paid enough to 
 insure him, if he is prudent and economical, and has 
 no bad habits, a living for himself and his children 
 while they are too young to labor remuneratively, 
 oppoifcunity to educate them, and some support for 
 himself and wife when the power to labor shall have 
 
40 
 
 CONSCIENCE 
 
 ceased. That is only enough to give the State the 
 strength of its citizens. That is only enough to make 
 firm the ground-sill which must lie under what your 
 Wendell Phillips calls the heavy working of republi¬ 
 can institutions. If public sentiment, if arbitrating 
 boards, if friends of capital or labor, will turn atten¬ 
 tion upon the facts officially ascertained and pub¬ 
 lished by your Massachusetts Bureau, it will be found 
 that children’s rights are deeply complicated with 
 this whole question of wages. Why, you have in 
 this Commonwealth now 104,000 illiterates out of a 
 population of 1,600,000. Twelve thousand of these 
 illiterates are native born. More than ninety thou¬ 
 sand are foreign born. But, whether born here or 
 abroad, they failed to learn to read and write, chiefly 
 because it was necessary for them to assist in the 
 support of their families. It is understood very well 
 by all who have looked into the statistics on this 
 question, that “ children under fifteen years of age ” 
 —I am reading the very words of the report of 1875 
 of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor— “ supply by 
 their labor from one-eighth to one-sixth of the total 
 family earnings of the wage class in this Common¬ 
 wealth. On children, parents depend for from one- 
 fourth to one-third of the entire family earnings.” 
 Families with most children occupy usually the worst 
 tenements. Without children’s earnings a majority 
 of the 397 families, which your Bureau visited in 
 1875, would have fallen into poverty or debt. With 
 the assistance of children, there was only in a few 
 cases a possibility of a family acquiring a competence, 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 41 
 
 that is, of having a home of its own, even after the 
 father was sixty years old. 
 
 Now, I am drawing near a time of life when I 
 ought to begin to think of founding a home; and it 
 would certainly seem to be hardship to me, if at forty 
 or forty-five years of age I could not have a little 
 place that I could call mine. But what if at fifty or 
 sixty I could not ? How do I know that a grandson 
 of mine will not be a laborer by the day ? How do 
 you know that the haughty children of Boston may 
 not have grandchildren that will not be haughty on 
 a dollar a day ? We in this country are all members 
 of each other, for there is no hereditary position for 
 any man ; and what if at sixty your descendant could 
 not, if industrious, economical, and without bad habits, 
 have a little home of his own when his power to labor 
 ceases ? I conversed with a celebrated manufacturer 
 in old Manchester, England, once, and put the ques¬ 
 tion to him, whether any large percentage of the ordi¬ 
 nary unskilled operative class in England could have 
 homes of their own. “Not three in a thousand,” 
 said he. Although you may not believe it until you 
 examine the facts, low-paid labor in this country, in 
 the very language of your own Massachusetts Bureau, 
 “has only in a few cases a possibility of acquiring a 
 competence,” that is, a home of its own. 
 
 My proposition is simply that we must not violate 
 children’s rights, and add thus to the strangely cres¬ 
 cent class of the illiterate; and that we must not vio¬ 
 late the rights of people in extreme age, and thus fill 
 up the ranks of the poorhouse and of all who depend 
 
42 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 on charity. We are closing the youth of the Ameri 
 can republic. We are drawing near its majority, and 
 children’s rights and the rights of age we must pro¬ 
 tect by a proper consideration of wages. 
 
 Who is to arbitrate? Mr. Mundella says that 
 arbitration abroad has effected more than any thing 
 else to heal difficulties between workingmen and 
 their employers. I fear greatly that the State of 
 Ohio, in now leading off American sentiment in the 
 direction of governmental interference between capi¬ 
 tal and labor, is taking a somewhat unadvised step. 
 This whole matter is going into politics. Dema¬ 
 gogues are to discuss it. We are to have all kinds of 
 deformers mingled with reformers on this theme. 
 If I venture much in introducing it here, I do so 
 because I believe that only a diffusion of conscien¬ 
 tiousness by the churches, only the bringing of all 
 classes, rich and poor, into those relations which be¬ 
 long to them when they are on the floor of God’s 
 house and measured by His standards, can ultimately 
 give safety to society under republican institutions. 
 [Applause.] You have no better arbitrating board 
 in America between labor and capital than the vol¬ 
 untary system in the American church. Give us a 
 glorious American church, and we will settle for the 
 world here, and settle peaceably, the conflicts which 
 only the bayonet has been able to put down abroad. 
 
 You Christianize Magdalen, you wish to Christian¬ 
 ize Lazarus, you would Christianize Dives. Has not 
 the hour come in America when religion, in the name 
 of political science and of Him who once had not where 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 43 
 
 to lay His head, should stand erect in her shining 
 garments, and teach, in no craven or apologetic tone, 
 not only that republican institutions must Christian¬ 
 ize Magdalen and Lazarus and Dives, but that, first 
 of all governmental institutions in the world, they 
 must Christianize Caesar ? [Applause.] 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 Dante, describing the angels whom he met in the 
 Paradiso, impresses us at once with their external 
 glory and their spiritual effulgence. Invariably he 
 makes the former a result of the latter. With closer 
 faithfulness to physical science than he dreamed, and 
 building better than he knew, he sings : — 
 
 “ Another of those splendors 
 Approached me, and its will to pleasure me 
 It signified by brightening outwardly, 
 
 As one delighted to do good ; 
 
 Became a thing transplendent in my sight, 
 
 As a fine ruby smitten by the sun.” 
 
 Paradiso, canto ix. 13-19. 
 
 Dante says of Beatrice, as he saw her in the Para¬ 
 diso, that,— 
 
 “ She smiled so joyously, 
 
 That God seemed in her countenance to rejoice.” 
 
 Paradiso, canto xxvii. 105. 
 
 Allow me to adopt this last line of Dante’s, and all 
 it suggests, as a description of what I mean by solar 
 light in the face of man. This radiance ought to be 
 by us, as it is by natural law, most searchingly di^ 
 
14 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 tinguished from all lesser illuminations. Its specific 
 difference from every other light is that in it G-od seems 
 to overawe beholders and to rejoice . It is scientifically 
 incontrovertible that there is sometimes seen such a 
 light in the present world. Many a poet and seer 
 and martyr and reformer, or woman of the finest 
 fibre, has at times had a face that has looked like 
 porcelain with a light behind it. But this is not solar 
 light, unless it have in it that specific overawing 
 difference which Dante names. The mysteriously 
 commanding and glad light is to be distinguished 
 from merely aesthetic or intellectual luminousness in 
 the countenance, by a peculiar moral authority, inci¬ 
 sive regnancy, and unforced elateness, bliss, and awe. 
 The radiance cannot be counterfeited. It can come 
 into existence only on inexorable conditions. The 
 appearance and disappearance of the solar light in 
 the face of man are governed by fixed natural laws. 
 Is it possible to discover any of them ? 
 
 First of all, I ask you to look at the whole topic 
 of solar self-culture through the lenses of the coolest 
 inductive research. Put aside all mysticism; fasten 
 the attention only on visible facts, as well known to 
 be a part of human experience as that men walk or 
 breathe; build only on the granite of the scientific 
 method, and let us see what structure can be erected 
 by the use of blocks cut on a line with the natural 
 cleavage of the rock from this unhewn quarry, that 
 is, by untutored, indisputable propositions certified 
 by daily observation. 
 
 1. There is sometimes in the face a solar look. 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 45 
 
 2. There is sometimes in the face an earthy look. 
 
 3. The former arises from the activity of the higher 
 nature when conscience is supreme. 
 
 4. The latter arises from the activity of the lower 
 nature when conscience is not supreme. 
 
 5. The earthy look, other things being equal, 
 quails before the solar look. 
 
 6. The merely intellectual light in a face quails 
 before the solar light when other things are equal. 
 
 7. Merely aesthetic light, or that arising from the 
 action of the faculties addressed by what is common¬ 
 ly called culture, quails, other things being equal, 
 before the solar light. 
 
 8. The light of merely executive force, other 
 things being equal, quails also. 
 
 9. The intellectual, the aesthetic, the executive, 
 and all other light combined, quail, other things 
 being equal, before the solar light. 
 
 10. It follows necessarily that only such self-cul¬ 
 ture as brings this light to the face can give its 
 possessor all the power possible to man. 
 
 11. Only such self-culture can cause the lower 
 forms of culture to stand in awe before it. 
 
 12. The only complete and the only victorious 
 self-culture, therefore, is scientifically known to be 
 solar self-culture. 
 
 Be Greeks, gentlemen, long enough to believe 
 that every change, and therefore the variation in the 
 inner illumination of the countenance, must have an 
 adequate cause. How is it that this peculiar com¬ 
 manding light springs up from within the multiplex 
 
46 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 whole of our physical organism? Your materialist 
 will say that certain emotions increase the tension 
 of the mechanism of the eye; and that, therefore, 
 external light is more readily reflected by it, and that 
 we have hence, apparently, a new light in the eye 
 when those emotions are active. But what is to be 
 said of the light that beams from the forehead, and 
 from the cheeks, and seems to be capable of beaming 
 from the whole exterior of our mysterious form? 
 That radiance does beam from the forehead; it does 
 beam from the cheeks; and why might it not, if this 
 capacity of the organism to shine were once put into 
 full action, beam from the whole man? The ma¬ 
 terialist would say that the particles of matter in the 
 cellular integument are capable of re-arrangement by 
 certain emotions, and that they reflect light better 
 on account of this re-arrangement. But what gives 
 those emotions the power to re-arrange physical par¬ 
 ticles in any way, and especially in such a way as to 
 cause them to reflect light overawingly ? It is incon¬ 
 trovertible that a very peculiar, commanding light is 
 brought into the face by the activity of the upper 
 faculties in man. We are to explain this light and 
 its effects, by studying man as an organic multiplex. 
 The light is there, and you know it is there. We 
 see it. It is a physical fact. 
 
 On the other hand, there is an earthy, opaque look. ' 
 “ O ye hapless two,” says Carlyle of Charlotte Cor- 
 day and Jean Paul Marat, ‘‘mutually extinctive, the 
 Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well in the Moth¬ 
 er’s bosom that bore you both. This was the His 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 47 
 
 tory of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most com* 
 plete; angelic, demonic ; like a star.” (.French 
 Revolution, yoI. ii., book vi., chap, i.) Compare the 
 faces of Charlotte Corday and Marat. 
 
 Certain passions give a dark look to the counte¬ 
 nance. How do they do that ? Is it merely by a 
 re-arrangement of the ultimate atoms of the skin and 
 of the external parts of the eye ? The astute mate¬ 
 rialist admits that certain emotions are accompanied 
 by such displacements of the atoms of which the 
 body is composed as permit the exterior of the coun¬ 
 tenance to reflect light only imperfectly. How is it 
 that the bad passions thus relax us ? It is incontro¬ 
 vertible that earthy passions give an earthy look to the 
 countenance. The bestial man acquires an opaque 
 and peculiarly repulsive complexion. 
 
 When I stood once in the Jewish Wailing-place in 
 Jerusalem, and contrasted the pure blood of the Jew 
 with the coarse blood of the Arab, I had before me 
 
 i 
 
 on the one hand, countenances singularly capable of 
 illumination; and on the other, faces singularly inca¬ 
 pable of it. Say, if you please, that I am going off 
 scientific ground here. I affirm that I have a scien¬ 
 tific right to take the monogamistic Jew and the 
 polygamistic Arab, or the Old Testament and the 
 Koran put into flesh and blood by long centuries of 
 experience, and to compare them. Not a few chil¬ 
 dren from some of the best Jewish families on the 
 earth are sent to Jerusalem for education; and even 
 the careless observer of the faces of many of them 
 must see that they are pure in blood, and, as I was 
 
48 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 compelled to think, of finer grain than the Italians 
 and the Greeks of the Forum and the Acropolis. 
 But, I said, “You have forgotten the English; you 
 have forgotten the Americans; ” and, as my conclu¬ 
 sions were taking that posture, there came into the 
 brown, crowded square two children in English dress, 
 and began to converse with the Jewish children. I 
 thought, “ These are sons of rough men probably: 
 they do not represent the English or the American 
 fineness.” They were superior in animal force, but 
 plainly inferior in capacity for the solar look, to the 
 Jewish boys with whom they conversed face to face. 
 I asked to whom the outrivalled children belonged, 
 and found they were sons of one of the most cul¬ 
 tured men, indeed, of one of the missionaries, in the 
 Holy City. The Arab, however, was the greater 
 contrast, — opaque, repulsive, conspicuously impervi¬ 
 ous to light in his countenance; while, in the best 
 specimens, the Jew shone from behind his physi¬ 
 cal integument at times like a light behind thin 
 translucent marble. We know that this contrast 
 exists in different men we meet, and in different 
 moods of the same individual. Men may be made 
 of floss-silk, and have aesthetic luminousness in their 
 faces, and yet no solar light. The darkness of the 
 Ethiop face does not hinder it from exhibiting either 
 the solar light or its opposite. It is a wholly incon¬ 
 trovertible fact, that an earthy look comes from an 
 earthy mood, and a solar look from a conscientious. 
 
 But now, will any one who reveres the scientific 
 method deny my chief proposition, that the earthy 
 
SOLAB SELF-CULTUKE. 
 
 49 
 
 look, other things being equal, quails before the 
 solar ? Is not that known to ordinary observation ? 
 No doubt, if a Csesar or a Napoleon conies before 
 some man of weak will, the latter, although he may 
 be a good man, — and especially if he is a goody, a 
 very different thing, — will quail. But give the latter 
 the executive power and intellect of your Ceesar, and 
 what is the result ? Other things being equal , Caesar's 
 eye goes down whenever it meets and does not possess 
 the solar look. The veriest sick girl with this solar 
 light behind her eyeballs is more than a match for 
 Csesar without it. Yes, Cromwell’s daughter was a 
 match for him once, and Caesar’s wife for the man 
 whose finger-tap overawed a Roman senate. There 
 are no forces known to the lights of the eyes, that, 
 other things being equal, ever do or can put down 
 the solar light, even in the sick and the weak. Poets 
 have celebrated many lesser radiances, and occasion¬ 
 ally this highest radiance that can belong to woman. 
 There are behind it an awe, and a right to command, 
 which distinguish it from all other lights. 
 
 We know that the brute sees the sunset; but does 
 *t feel its pensiveness? No doubt the monsters that 
 tore each other in the early geological ages beheld 
 the risings of the suns, and their noons, and their 
 descendings. The eyes of many a winged creature 
 in the night reflect as perfect images of the stars as 
 did Newton’s. But do they appreciate what we call 
 beauty, or sublimity, or natural law ? The ivorld is a 
 sealed book to the brute; and an archangel would say 
 that it is to us . On his vision, were he in the world, 
 
50 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 might fall no more than on ours; but he would read 
 as many more meanings than we, as we than the 
 brute. What is the significance of this mysterious, 
 commanding, solar light ? It is a visible fact, but we 
 gaze on it apparently with brutish, uncomprehending 
 eyes. We do not intellectually fathom it, and yet we 
 feel it much as the brute feels the authority of the 
 human eye. 
 
 Your pensive, wailing, inferior creature gazing 
 • into the human face seems very often to be governed 
 by an awe that does not arise from fear of physical 
 injury. There is command in the intellectual light 
 when it is contrasted with the merely animal light. 
 The poor four-footed brute goes away with, it may 
 be, a vague sense of worship, or of affection at last, 
 if you draw it towards you. The canine creatures 
 can thus be tamed; and untamable beasts can be 
 looked out of countenance, — even your lion and 
 your tiger, if you gaze steadily upon them, contrast¬ 
 ing the human radiance with the animal. Now, just 
 as that four-footed brute may feel, looking into your 
 eyes, so I confess I have felt sometimes when looking 
 into the eyes of those better than myself. I have 
 felt brutish; I have felt my inferiority; I have 
 quailed, I confess it, before eyes which I thought 
 had behind them a holier light than mine have ever 
 shown. I sometimes compare my mood at such in¬ 
 stants with that of your creature that cannot speak, 
 and that slinks away with a sense of inferiority. I 
 know that this light is my master. I do not quite 
 understand the light. The poor brute does not un> 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 51 
 
 derstand the radiance in the human eyes, but confesses 
 that this light is above it; and so I have felt that in 
 the solar radiance there is something above all my 
 earthiness. There is no man that can look on what 
 we call the solar light in the human countenance, and 
 feel that it is genuine, and not reverence it. There 
 is a natural awe in its presence. What does this 
 incontrovertible fact mean? There are only a few 
 animals so low that they cannot be looked out of 
 countenance; and there are only a few men so low 
 that they cannot be looked out of countenance 
 also. 
 
 As the brute sees the sunset, and does not under¬ 
 stand it, gazes upon the glory and beauty, and finds 
 it a sealed book, so we see but do not appreciate 
 this marvellous capacity of man’s countenance to 
 clothe itself in solar light; and yet in it we are look¬ 
 ing upon something which in another age will be 
 better understood in the name of science. So much 
 is already incontestably known : that the solar light 
 exists; that all other light quails before it; that it 
 springs from the heights of conscience ; and that the 
 only complete and the only victorious self-culture 
 must be solar self-culture. Even if we were com¬ 
 pelled to pause here, we should have attained a 
 point of vision where, as Goethe said when he 
 climbed Vesuvius, one look backward takes awav 
 all the fatigue of the ascent, and is a regenerating 
 bath. Our age believes in culture ; a more scientific 
 age will believe in solar self-culture. On the height 
 tc which our inductive research has now carried us 
 
52 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 will be erected tabernacles to the honor of the only 
 culture by which, under natural law, the yet opaque 
 face of civilization can find transfiguring and com¬ 
 manding radiance. 
 
 What of the Transfiguration? Was that an ex¬ 
 ample of solar light ? The clouds are slowly parting 
 above this theme, and is it possible that we have not 
 yet reached its summit ? Is this outlook of ours only 
 from a mountain range so low as to be hardly a ves¬ 
 tibule ? There is a solar light; and what if, adhering 
 now to all that science proves concerning it, we gaze 
 up the Alps, so unexpectedly uncovered, as the 
 vapors part themselves above the stupendous veiled 
 summits of revelation ? Is it possible that their 
 height itself has kept them obscured until we had 
 little knowledge of their existence ? 
 
 I am asking you here and now only to take scrip¬ 
 tural facts as statements of the Christian point of 
 view. If there is any man here who regards the his¬ 
 tory as mythical, even he will allow me to use it to 
 show what Christianity believes. I am scientifically 
 authorized to make reference to it all to indicate 
 what has been taught on the topic of the solar ra¬ 
 diance. 
 
 It is recorded that in an Eastern city a martyr was 
 once tried, and as all they who sat in the council 
 looked steadfastly on him they beheld his face, as it 
 were the face of an angel. Is it possible that the 
 solar light present in this case, and in approximately 
 similar cases in our day, is the same thing in each ? 
 It is recorded also, as we remember, now that W'e 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 53 
 
 allow our minds to sweep through the vistas of his¬ 
 torical examples, that a lawgiver, who yet rules the 
 
 centuries, once had, as he came down from a certain 
 
 _ • 
 
 mount, a face that shone. The old Greek used to 
 inquire with intensest philosophical interest what 
 that light was which appeared once, not in the face 
 only, but in the hands and in the feet and in the 
 garments, of the only Member of the human race 
 who hjis ever shown us solar light at its best. The 
 Greek asked in the early days of Christianity, 
 Whence that light? There is incontrovertibly a 
 solar light which fills the faces of a few men and 
 women in our day. Dante, I take it, is looking 
 towards this fact when he says, “ That which in 
 heaven is flame, on earth is smoke.” Is it possible 
 that the solar look which comes into the counte¬ 
 nance whenever the loftier zones of feeling are in 
 full action is of the same sort with that which 
 appeared in the face of Dante’s Beatrice, delighted 
 to do good; and in the face of Him whose counte¬ 
 nance was like that of an angel; and in the face of 
 Moses; and in the unfathomed symbolisms of the 
 Transfiguration? Is it of the same sort with that 
 light which fills the world of those who have no need 
 of the sun, because the face of the Lamb doth lighten 
 them, and the glory of God is the lamp of their tab¬ 
 ernacle ? 
 
 These questions may well blanch the cheeks ; but 
 they are to be studied in the spirit of science, if we 
 are to think with any freedom or breadth. Surely, 
 here is a train of investigation not often followed 
 
b4 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 in detail. Having read to you twelve propositions 
 drawn up from the point of view of science, let me 
 read twelve drawn up from the point of view of un¬ 
 adulterated Christianity. 
 
 1. It is historically known that the early Chris¬ 
 tians regarded the possession of the solar, command¬ 
 ing look, as a sign of the possession of the Holy 
 Spirit. Stephen, when full of the Holy Ghost, had 
 a face like that of an angel. When Moses came 
 down from the mount his face shone. 
 
 2. At the Transfiguration this solar light had its 
 supreme manifestation. 
 
 3. That light was perhaps a revelation of the ca¬ 
 pacities of the ethereal enswathement of the soul, 
 and of a spiritual force acting through the physical 
 organization. 
 
 To those who were present at the Transfiguration, 
 the Cross did not seem other than the voluntary hu¬ 
 miliation of Him who was stretched upon it. A rev¬ 
 elation of some of the capacities of the spiritual 
 body, which death, according to Ulrici, separates 
 from the flesh, was made to three of the disciples; 
 and they were the three who afterwards witnessed 
 the agony in the garden, and were nearest to the 
 Crucifixion. They were prepared for the witness¬ 
 ing of the agony by the previous revelation of the 
 glory of the body which was transfigured. 
 
 There was a cloud which appeared in the Transfig¬ 
 uration, and it is recorded that the disciples feared as 
 they entered into that cloud. It is said, also, that 
 when He who was transfigured walked once up the 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 55 
 
 slope from Jordan to Bethlehem, the disciples fol¬ 
 lowed him, and were afraid. The light which ap¬ 
 peared in the Transfiguration appeared again in the 
 Ascension ; and the cloud that overshadowed the for¬ 
 mer was the chariot of the latter. 
 
 We have considered here ( Biology , Lecture XIII.) 
 the schemes of thought which assert that there may 
 be three things in the universe, and not merely two: 
 matter and mind, and a middle somewhat, ordinarily 
 called the ether, and at least not atomic, as what 
 we call matter is. We know how Ulrici and others 
 speak of an ethereal enswathement of the soul, and 
 of a spiritual body. 
 
 What if the cloud which appeared at the Trans¬ 
 figuration was some revelation to the human sense of 
 that ether which Richter calls the home of souls? 
 What if the transfiguring light was but a revelation 
 of the capacities of the spiritual being, enswathed 
 within the flesh as light is enswathed within the flee¬ 
 cy tabernacle of the translucent flying clouds in the 
 noon yonder above our heads ? Mysterious, you say? 
 But after all we must adhere to the principle that 
 every change must have an adequate cause. As 
 Dante says, there is smoke on earth; the solar light 
 in the human body is dim here; but what is this 
 flame, when at its best ? The light of the fire that 
 shines in the eyes of a good man or woman, how 
 bright would it be if their goodness could be en¬ 
 larged to the measure of that of the Soul that never 
 sinned? How would it illuminate then the whole 
 frame ? Is there unity of kind between the light, that 
 
56 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 we call the solar look in scientific parlance, and the 
 radiance that filled Stephen’s face, or that of Moses ? 
 A spiritual force was concerned in the two cases, and 
 its powers are yet unchanged. Was not the same 
 force concerned in the Transfiguration also? Was 
 not one object of that event to make a revelation of 
 the hidden glory of our Lord’s Person ? 
 
 Are we going too far when we say that these topics 
 which interested the old Greeks so passionately are 
 worth looking at as the vestibule to the majestic 
 temple of conscience? Activity of the upper zones 
 of feeling is what causes this peculiar light in our 
 little experience of it. We have but the twilight, a 
 dim scintillation of this radiance. But we know that 
 what little we have of it comes from the innermost 
 holiest of conscience. Raphael studied the Trans¬ 
 figuration, and his painted conception of it was borne 
 aloft above his funeral bier. Are we not in the ad¬ 
 vances of science obtaining some views of it which 
 his canvas cannot show us ? 
 
 It is recorded of our Lord, that, as he prayed, the 
 fashion of his countenance was altered, and his face 
 did shine as the sun, and his raiment became white 
 and glistering, so as no fuller on earth can white 
 them. 
 
 4. As our Lord’s body was human, it is not too 
 much to say that its mysterious, overawing capa¬ 
 bility of receiving illumination from within by spir¬ 
 itual forces must be supposed to be possessed in 
 some degree by every human body. 
 
 5. An obscurest form of perhaps the same sol ax 
 light is yet seen occasionally among men. 
 
SOLAR SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 57 
 
 6. We know that the light arises from the blissful 
 supremacy of conscience, and the activity of all the 
 higher powers of the soul. 
 
 7. As the Scriptures made the possession of this 
 light one of the signs of the possession of the Holy 
 Spirit in the scriptural days, we must infer that this 
 light is such a sign in these days. 
 
 8. The innermost holiest of conscience, in bliss¬ 
 ful supremacy, is therefore known to science as well 
 as revelation, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 9. But the Holy Spirit was shed forth by Him who 
 was the Light that lighteth every man that cometli 
 into the world. 
 
 10. The modern solar light and that Light are 
 therefore identified. 
 
 11. But the solar light is scientifically known to 
 be the only commanding light; and therefore the 
 Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world is scientifically known to be the only command¬ 
 ing light. 
 
 12. The only complete and the only victorious 
 self-culture is scientifically known to be solar self¬ 
 culture ; but solar self-culture and Christian self-cul¬ 
 ture, so far forth as both are solar, are identical; and 
 both are known to science as solar so far forth onl) 
 as they originate in the innermost holiest of con¬ 
 science. 
 
 Harvard yonder, Matthew Arnold, Stuart Mill, all 
 ranks of modern scholars, believe in culture. But 
 there is only one form of culture that gives suprem¬ 
 acy, and that is the form which produces the solar 
 
58 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 look; and the solar look comes only from the Light 
 that lighteth every man that cometli into the world. 
 It may he incontrovertibly proved by the coolest induc¬ 
 tion from fixed natural law, that the highest culture 
 must be that through which the solar look shines, and 
 that this look is possible only when there exists in 
 the soul glad self-surrender to the innermost holiest 
 of Conscience. In that innermost holiest, Christian¬ 
 ity finds a personal Omnipresence. Culture should 
 believe in the law of the survival of the fittest. Two 
 lights conflict, — the earthy and the solar. Your 
 eyes filled with poetic rapture, your loftiest attitudes 
 of merely aesthetic or intellectual culture, quail, other 
 things being equal, before the solar look. Here is a 
 fact of science: a visible, physical, haughty circum¬ 
 stance of yet unfathomed significance; an unexplored 
 remainder on which what calls itself culture, and 
 quails, may do well to fasten prolonged attention. 
 
 “ Satan . . . dilated stood, 
 
 Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved; 
 
 His stature reached the sky, and on his crest 
 Sat Horror plumed. . . . 
 
 The Eternal . . . 
 
 Hung forth in heaven His golden scales, yet seen 
 Betwixt Astraea and the Scorpion sign, 
 
 . . . The fiend looked up, and knew 
 His mounted scale aloft; nor more ; but fled 
 Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.” 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost , iv. 985 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
m. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL 
 
 LAW. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-THIRD LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 OCT. 15. 
 
Quid enim aliud est natura, quam Deus, et divina latio, toti 
 inundo et partibus ejus inserta?— Seneca: Be Bene/., iv. 7. 
 
 So lange das "Wort Gott in einer Sprache noch dauert und tont, 
 bo richtet es das Menschenauge nacb oben auf. — Richter: Levana. 
 
m. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OP THE 
 
 MORAL LAW. 
 
 PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 The parliamentary expenses of the Brighton rail¬ 
 way in England were fifteen thousand dollars a mile. 
 George III. sometimes expended for purposes of polit¬ 
 ical corruption the money voted to him as king, and 
 called his gifts golden pills. We all remember very 
 well that Lord Chatham’s measures of reform were 
 often spoiled by Lord Bute, and that the latter fre¬ 
 quently succeeded by striking the great statesman’s 
 followers with a golden club. It is said that Lord 
 Bute, in a single day, issued to the order of his 
 agents twenty-five thousand pounds. On one oc¬ 
 casion a government loan was raised among his 
 adherents by private subscription, on such terms as 
 to distribute among them three hundred and fifty 
 thousand pounds of public money. In the days of 
 the Pensioned Parliament, peerages were bought 
 and sold, and now and then the amounts paid for 
 them entered in the books of the exchequer. It 
 
 was very common to buy a member of the Lower 
 
 61 
 
62 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 House, and even a lord was sometimes sold over 
 his chair as you sell goods over the counter of a 
 stall. It is altogether too early yet to forget politi¬ 
 cal corruption in England; but since the reform 
 measures of 1832, civil-service amelioration has taken 
 such hold of Great Britain, that it is now almost an 
 unheard-of procedure to sell, or to attempt to buy, a 
 member of Parliament. The corruption which existed 
 in Great Britain during the railway mania was per¬ 
 haps as great as that in the United States in the 
 times of our Credit Mobilier. During the struggles 
 with Napoleon, corruption in English public life 
 was far-reaching in every political department. 
 Macaulay says, however, that even then the judi¬ 
 ciary was not corrupt in England, and that com¬ 
 merce was generally very sound. It is to be 
 remembered that we have an elective judiciary in 
 twenty-two States, and that probably our miserable 
 civil service has affected the judiciary more than the 
 judges were ever influenced in England by political 
 corruption. Nevertheless there was a nobility in 
 England, depending largely on the civil service for 
 places for sons not put into position by the law of 
 primogeniture. Second sons, third and fourth, and 
 so on, were to be pensioned in a state church or in a 
 political office, or in the army or navy. If our judi¬ 
 ciary is a more corrupt body than the English ever 
 was, we have no upper class with strong interests at 
 stake in the existence of corruption. Therefore the 
 field is perhaps not a very much more difficult one 
 here now than it was in England in 1832, for the 
 progress of civil-service reform. 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLEKESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 63 
 
 How, then, did this change occur in England ? A 
 Congress meets to-day at Washington, called together 
 by the first American President who has attacked 
 what George William Curtis calls the “consuming 
 gangrene ” of our public life, office-holding control 
 of politics. [Applause.] This English history, this 
 black page and the present white page, are they not 
 worth attention from Congress and from us? Did 
 the black page immediately precede the white? or 
 were there some gray leaves interspersed, some 
 blotched and almost ragged pages, between the dark 
 record of corruption and the present honest civil 
 service in England ? As early as 1832 reform be¬ 
 gan ; but it was not until about the year 1853, when 
 Sir Stafford Northcote drew up his definite proposi¬ 
 tions, that civil service reform grew to be a victori¬ 
 ous cause in England. There have been, however, 
 twenty years of crescent success in Great Britain for 
 civil service reform. The result is, that to-day the 
 contrast of American and English politics is vastly 
 to our disadvantage, while the contrast of Ameri¬ 
 can politics under Washington and Jefferson with 
 English politics of the same period would have been 
 greatly to the disadvantage of the English. About 
 the time when the reform measures were passed in 
 Great Britain, Andrew Jackson introduced here the 
 spoils system. And now that twenty years of vigor¬ 
 ous action on the part of the executive of Great 
 Britain has shown what can be done for civil service 
 reform there, why should we not cast a sharp glance 
 upon that page of English precedent, when the topio 
 
64 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 of civil-service reform comes before America, with 
 its fatter and vaster political spoils, as a question al¬ 
 most of life or death ? 
 
 What is the particular regulation of office-holding 
 in Great Britain? The premier appoints, of course, 
 his colleagues in his cabinet, with the advice of the 
 King or Queen. Then the cabinet together choose 
 subsidiary officers just under them. Only about 
 thirty men in the upper ranges of the civil service 
 are changed when the party or the ministry changes. 
 With very few and now decreasing exceptions, the 
 lower ranges are filled by competitive examinations. 
 A man once in position expects to keep his place 
 during good behavior, and to be promoted for merit. 
 The consequence is, that the control of politics has 
 been taken out of the hands of party in Great 
 Britain, so far as office-holding is concerned, and put 
 into the hands of the people, where it belongs. To¬ 
 day public sentiment probably has a greater power 
 over parliamentary action than over congressional: 
 at least, its effects are more immediately perceived. 
 A change can be brought about more quickly in the 
 Parliament than in Congress by a haughty, command¬ 
 ing public sentiment. The reason is that patronage 
 is not left in the hands of members of Parliament to 
 corrupt the country through every small office. 
 
 We must beware of demagogues who clamor against 
 an office-holding aristocracy, and who assure us that 
 civil-service competitive examinations would result 
 in the institution of a class having peculiar privi¬ 
 leges. That class in England serves Lord Beacons* 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MOKAL LAW. 65 
 
 field to-day and Gladstone to-morrow. How peculiar 
 are its privileges ? on which side is it ? It is a great 
 proiession; it has learned how to do its work; it 
 keeps in place although ministries change. Just so, 
 if we had such an office-holding class in this country, 
 it would serve both political parties, do its work 
 well, and could not be bought and sold from custom¬ 
 house to post-office, or become a standing bribe in 
 Congress. We must not allow the office of an 
 American senator to become a gift enterprise. As 
 a reformed civil service would be filled by merit, and 
 as competition for places in it would be open to 
 everybody, we should have a class serving both 
 political parties, and therefore no aristocracy at all. 
 
 We ought to conduct the mechanical part of our 
 governmental work as a great factory does its busi¬ 
 ness, by retaining the servants who have shown them¬ 
 selves capable. When ten or twelve acres of factory 
 floors change owners, the shrewd men in Boston and 
 New York who manage the enterprises that move the 
 whirring looms on those floors do not change all their 
 foremen nor all their operatives. They know what 
 men have done well, and keep them in place. Our 
 national business is to be managed for the benefit of 
 the nation, and not for that of a party. [Applause.] 
 It is to be managed by the people that own the whir¬ 
 ring looms, and not by the men who are speculators 
 at the best, and who make a business of fleecing each 
 other as rivals. Of course there will never come, in 
 America, any peace or purity in politics until the day 
 of the disestablishment of the machine in politics, 
 [Applause.] 
 
66 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 After Robespierre bad choked the Seine with the 
 vainly whimpering heads sheared away by the guil¬ 
 lotine, there came an hour when a death-tumbril con¬ 
 taining himself was trundled toward the fatal French 
 axe. Carlyle tells us that the streets were crowded 
 from the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revolu¬ 
 tion, the very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth 
 human curiosity, in strange gladness. The soldiers 
 with their sabres pointed out Robespierre, as the 
 crowd pressed close about the cart. A French 
 mother, remembering what rivers of blood that man’s 
 right hand had wrung out of the throat of France, 
 springs on the tumbril, clutching the side of it with 
 one hand, and, waving the other sibyl-like, exclaims, 
 “ Your death intoxicates me with joy.” The almost 
 glazed eyes of the would-be suicide Robespierre open. 
 “ Scelerat , go down, go down to hell with the curses 
 of all wives and mothers! ” A little while after Sam¬ 
 son did his work, and a shout raised itself as the 
 head was lifted, — a shout, says history, which pro¬ 
 longs itself yet through Europe, and down to our 
 day. (Carlyle, The French Revolution , vol. ii., 
 book viii., chap, vii., “Go down to.”) That word 
 “ dozen ” will never be understood by us until we con¬ 
 trast it with the “ up,” with which men salute the 
 Gracchi and the Phocions, the Lafayettes, the Wash¬ 
 ingtons and the Hampdens, and which prolongs it¬ 
 self mysteriously in history. The word u down,” 
 once uttered by the ages, is rarely reversed; and the 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 57 
 
 word 44 up,” once looking haughtily on that word 
 k4 down,” very rarely, in history, changes its coun¬ 
 tenance. 
 
 There appear to be behind these two words inex¬ 
 orable natural laws. Is it possible to discover any of 
 them ? 
 
 1. Instinctive physical gestures accompany the 
 action of strong feelings. 
 
 2. It is a peculiarity of the strongest moral emo¬ 
 tions, that the general direction of the physical ges¬ 
 tures which they prompt is either up or down. 
 
 3. By the operation of a fixed natural law of the 
 human organism, we hang the head in shame or acute 
 self-disapproval. 
 
 4. By the operation of a fixed natural law, we hold 
 the head erect when conscious of good intentions, or 
 acute self-approval. 
 
 5. It is a physical fact, demonstrable by the widest 
 induction, that the gestures prompted by the blissful 
 supremacy of conscience have their general direction 
 upward, and give the human form a reposeful and 
 commanding attitude. 
 
 6. It is also a physical fact, demonstrable by the 
 widest induction, that the gestures prompted by the 
 opposite relations to conscience have their general 
 direction downwards, and give the human form an 
 unreposeful and more or less grovelling attitude. 
 
 7. Other things being equal, the latter attitude 
 alway quails before the former. 
 
 8. By fixed natural law the upward gestures in¬ 
 duced by an approving conscience and the activity 
 
68 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 of the higher faculties are accompanied by a sense of 
 repose, of unfettered elasticity, and of a tendency to 
 physical levitation. 
 
 9. By fixed natural law the downward gestures 
 induced by a disapproving conscience are accompa¬ 
 nied by a sense of unrest, of fettered activity, and of 
 a tendency to delevitation. 
 
 10. In some of the most celebrated works of great 
 artists, the human form is represented as in a state 
 of physical levitation; but this is always pictured as 
 accompanied and caused by the blissful supremacy 
 of conscience and of the higher faculties. 
 
 11. It will be found, on an examination of personal 
 consciousness, that there is in the artistic sense a 
 feeling that forms exhibiting the blissful supremacy 
 of conscience and of the higher faculties will float, and 
 that forms which do not exhibit these traits will not. 
 
 12. So deep is the instinct concerned in the up¬ 
 ward gestures produced by an approving, and the 
 downward produced by a disapproving conscience, 
 that history contains large numbers of alleged in¬ 
 stances of the physical levitation of the human form 
 in moral trance. 
 
 13. Without deciding whether these cases are 
 authentic facts or not, their existence shows the 
 intensity of this instinct, and the great significance 
 of the inexorable natural law which it reveals. 
 
 14. In the existence of the instinctive upward and 
 downward physical gestures accompanying the ap¬ 
 proval and disapproval of conscience, natural law 
 reveals a distinction between up and down, higher 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MOBAL LAW. 69 
 
 and lower, in moral emotion; and, in doing that, 
 founds an aristocracy, strictly so called, or govern¬ 
 ment by the best, and determines that it shall rule; 
 and these instinctive gestures, occurring according 
 to natural law, are a proclamation of that aris¬ 
 tocracy, — the only one recognized by nature, and the 
 only one that will endure. • [Applause.] 
 
 15. It will be found that all the instances in human 
 experience of the distinction between up and down 
 and higher and lower, as thus defined by observation, 
 may be summarized under a law of moral gravitation 
 proceeding from conscience. 
 
 16. Moral gravitation, therefore, is as. well known 
 to exist, and is as tangible, as physical gravitation. 
 
 17. But all law in nature is but the uniform action 
 Df an Omnipresent Personal Will. 
 
 18. The tangibleness of the moral law in conscience 
 is scientifically known, therefore, to be identical with 
 the tangibleness of an Omnipresent Personal Will. 
 
 19. Moral gravitation is thus in, but not of, the soul. 
 
 20. There is, therefore, in man a Somewhat or 
 Some One not of him, and spiritually, and in a signifi¬ 
 cant sense physically, tangible through conscience. 
 
 Ascending that stairway of propositions, I have 
 not asked you to pause to converse on the balus¬ 
 trades; but, assuming that we have gone up the 
 height together, let us, now that we stand here, look 
 back, and make sure that all our steps were on the 
 adamant. Take no partisan witness, however, in our 
 examination of this case before the learned jurors in 
 this assembly. You say that I am a lawyer making a 
 
70 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 plea for a foregone conclusion! Is William Shak- 
 speare a partisan ? Did he know any thing of human 
 nature ? The heaviness of the soul of a man who has 
 done evil, is that recognized by William Shakspeare ? 
 
 Imagine that this Temple is Bosworth battle-field. 
 There is the tent of Richmond, and here the tent of 
 Richard. William Shakspeare shall guide us in our 
 study of natural laws in these two tents. He does 
 not look through partisan lenses. He is no theolo¬ 
 gian. What are these forms which rise in the dead 
 midnight between the two tents ? There are eleven 
 ghosts here. Shakspeare is behind every one of 
 them. They utter nothing that he does not put into 
 their lips; when they speak, he speaks; and some 
 of us have been taught to believe that when Shak 
 speare speaks, Nature speaks. 
 
 “ Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow; 
 
 Think how thou stabb’dst me in my prime of youth. 
 
 At Tewksbury : despair therefore, and die.” 
 
 So speaks the first ghost at Richard’s tent. 
 
 “Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronged souls 
 Of butchered princes fight in thy behalf: 
 
 King Henry’s issue, Richmond, comforts thee.” 
 
 So speaks the same ghost at Richmond’s tent. 
 
 “ When I was mortal, my anointed body 
 By thee was punched full of deadly holes. 
 
 Think on the Tower and me; despair and die: 
 
 Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die.” 
 
 So speaks the second ghost at Richard’s tent. 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 11 
 
 “ Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror! ” 
 
 So speaks the same ghost at Richmond's tent. 
 
 “ Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow, — 
 
 I that was washed to death with fulsome wine, 
 
 Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death 1 
 To-morrow in the battle think on me, 
 
 And fall thy edgeless sword; despair and die.” 
 
 So speaks the third ghost at Richard’s tent. 
 
 “ Good angels guard thy battle! Live and flourish! ” 
 
 So speaks the same ghost at Richmond’s tent. 
 
 “Let us sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow.” 
 
 So speak the ghosts of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, 
 at Richard’s tent. 
 
 “Awake, and think our wrongs in Richard’s bosom 
 Will conquer him! — Awake, and win the day.” 
 
 So speak the same ghosts at Richmond’s tent. 
 
 The ghost of Hastings rises. The ghosts of the 
 two young princes rise. 
 
 “ Dream on thy cousins smother’d in the Tower. 
 
 Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, 
 
 And iveigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death! 
 
 Thy nephews’ souls bid thee despair and die. — 
 
 Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and wake in joy: 
 Edward’s unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.” 
 
 The ghost of Queen Anne rises. 
 
 “ Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife, 
 
 That never slept a quiet hour with thee, 
 
 Now fills thy sleep with perturbations. 
 
 To-morrow, in the battle, think on me, 
 
 And fall thy powerless arm ; despair and die. — 
 
72 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Thou, quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep, 
 
 Dream of success and happy victory; 
 
 Thy adversary’s wife doth pray for thee.” 
 
 The ghost of Buckingham rises. 
 
 “ The first was I that helped thee to the crown: 
 
 Oh, in the battle think on Buckingham, 
 
 And die in terror of thy guiltiness! 
 
 God and good angels fight on Richmond’s side; 
 
 But Richard fall in height of all his pride.” 
 
 The ghosts vanish. 
 
 Is this natural ? or supernatural ? or both, and the 
 one because it is the other ? [Applause.] 
 
 Your Richard wakes yonder in his tent. 
 
 “ O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict me! — 
 
 The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight: 
 
 Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling fiesh. 
 
 I am a villain; yet I lie, I am not. 
 
 Fool, of thyself speak well; fool, do not flatter. 
 
 My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
 
 And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
 
 And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
 
 Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree; 
 
 Murder, stern murder, in the dir’st degree ; 
 
 All several sins, all used in each degree, 
 
 Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty 1 
 I shall despair. — There is no creature loves me ; 
 
 And, if I die, no soul will pity me ; — 
 
 Nay, wherefore should they, — since that I myself 
 Find in myself no pity to myself ? 
 
 Methought the souls of all that I had murdered 
 Came to my tent; and every one did threat 
 To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.”. 
 
 King Richard III ., act v , sc. iii 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 73 
 
 Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow ! So spoke 
 Sliakspeare; so, the ghosts; so, inductive science; 
 so, natural law; so, that Somewhat which is behind 
 all natural law; and so, that Some One who is behind 
 the Somewhat. [Applause.] 
 
 You will allow me to make reference here to some 
 of the subtlest of unexplored human experiences. I 
 am by no means drifting out of the range of scien¬ 
 tific currents and received thought, even if I ven¬ 
 ture to sail boldly into the fog which lies along the 
 shore of many an undiscovered land. But, my 
 friends, put Sliakspeare at the helm. Let us rec¬ 
 ognize him as the pilot; and, remembering what 
 weight he puts upon the word heavy , dare to look 
 into the canvas of a Raphael and an Angelo a mo¬ 
 ment, and into this deeper canvas of our own souls, 
 painted by natural law, that is, by the fingers of the 
 Personal Omnipresence, who was, and is, and is to 
 come. I affirm, what no man can deny, that the 
 natural language of gesture is God’s language. We 
 did not invent it. Surely natural language is the 
 language of nature ; and these gestures which make 
 us hang the head, and give us the erect attitude, are 
 proclamations made, not by the will of man, but by 
 the will of that Power which has co-ordinated all 
 things, and given them harmony with each other, 
 and never causes an instinct to utter a lie. We have 
 heretofore looked carefully into the distinction be¬ 
 tween an organic and an educated tendency. It 
 would mean very little if men had been taught lo 
 tiang their heads in shame. It would mean very 
 
74 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 little if men by a process of education bad learned 
 to assume the erect attitude when conscience is 
 supreme. It is scientifically sure, however, that, 
 when an organic instinct can be discovered, we have 
 a right to infer from its existence that of its corre¬ 
 late. We know that where there is a fin, there is 
 water to match it; where there is a wing, there 
 is air to match it; an eye, luminousness to match 
 it; an ear, sound to match it. The migrating swans 
 fly through the midnights and the morns, and they 
 lean in perfect confidence upon the Maker of their 
 instinct, knowing that if God has given them a ten¬ 
 dency to fly to the South, he will have provided a' 
 South as a correlate to the tendency. Our great 
 tests of truth are: intuition, instinct, experiment, 
 and syllogism. Incontrovertibly we have organic, 
 and not merely educated tendencies concerned in 
 these instinctive gestures, by which conscience in 
 blissful supremacy gives the human form a com¬ 
 manding or overawing attitude, and sometimes a 
 levitated mood. I say that the mood is levitated, 
 whether the form is or not. 
 
 In certain highest moments, when conscience as¬ 
 sures us that the stars fight for us, we do have a feel¬ 
 ing that if cast out unsupported into the ether we 
 should float there ; and we have at other times a 
 feeling that if we were disembodied, and cast out into 
 the unknown, we should sink. These two subtle and 
 subtly contrasted organic feelings are endlessly sig¬ 
 nificant. Do you believe the forger, the perjurer, the 
 murderer, has any feeling that he could float aloft 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 75 
 
 with the great levitated forms which the artists have 
 put upon canvas ? After studying often at Dresden 
 Raphael's Sistine Madonna, who will float, I paused 
 in the Louvre many times with dissatisfaction before 
 Murillo’s Madonna, who will not. She stands on a 
 crescent moon, and I think she needs it as a support. 
 But the Venus cli Milo will float, although she is 
 in marble. We have these instinctive feelings, al¬ 
 though we do not understand them any more than 
 the brute does the sunset. We cannot rid ourselves 
 of them if we allow our thoughts and emotions to 
 follow a natural course. We have strange, deep 
 sense by which we authorize ourselves to say of now 
 and then a female form in art, and even of the male 
 ^orm occasionally, though oftener of the female, that 
 it would float if left alone in the ether. This instinct 
 is an indisputable fact. It is surely a shore, although 
 veiled yet in vapor. We have not approached that 
 coast much yet, but there is the instinct; there is 
 firm land here, and the trend of its beaches, where 
 lies so much undiscovered gold, must be in perfect 
 accordance with that of all these instinctive gestures. 
 Begin with what cannot be controverted, or the prop¬ 
 osition that we hang the head in shame, and hold 
 it erect in conscious self-approval. We know that 
 some attitudes, in deep remorse, bring a man down 
 almost to the posture of the brute. We grovel in 
 the dust at times, when we feel ourselves under the 
 full thunder and lightning of the moral law. Mr. 
 Emerson says that he has read in Swedenborg — he 
 means he has read in natural law — that the good 
 
76 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 angels and the had angels always stand feet to feet • 
 the former perpendicularly up, the latter perpendicu¬ 
 larly down. If you please, that is science: it is not 
 poetry. It is poetry; but it is science, too. We see 
 a gleaming curve of the law in the hanging head 
 and in the erect and reposeful and commanding atti¬ 
 tude. We see it in that sense of elasticity and 
 almost of physical levitation which arises in states of 
 moral trance. We see it on the canvas of great 
 painters in yet higher manifestations; and when we 
 come to the asserted cases of physical levitation, we 
 have at least an indication of the intensity of the 
 instinct they represent, and therefore of its value as 
 a scientific guide. 
 
 Shakspeare is at the helm. Walk forward into this 
 wheeling vapor, and gaze shoreward from the how 
 of the vessel. Let him keep his place. He will not 
 ground you upon any rocks or shoals. Go to the 
 vexed leeward rail nearest this strange shore sound¬ 
 ing there under this obscuring mist, and open as a 
 chart — what ? Why, the British Quarterly Journal 
 of Science, edited by Professor Crookes. What does 
 he say ? Has he any guide-book to this fascinating 
 unknown coast? He publishes careful articles, in 
 which are summed up a large number of the alleged 
 historical cases of levitation in moral trance. Pliny 
 in his Natural History (vii., 18) said long ago that 
 the bodies of all living things weigh less when alive 
 and awake than sleeping or dead. (Mares pra3stare 
 pondere; et defuncta viventibus corpora omnium ani- 
 rnantium, et dormientia vigilantibus.) Dean Trench 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 77 
 
 (Notes on the Miracles , ed. vii. p. 289) defines 
 man as “ the animal that weighs less when alive and 
 awake than dead or asleep.” It is well known that 
 the levitation of the body of Mr. Home in London 
 is asserted on the testimony of eye-witnesses, includ¬ 
 ing in their number Professor Crookes, editor of the 
 Quarterly Journal of Science, Lord Lyndhurst, and 
 many other men of large experience, trained minds, 
 full culture, and unimpeached integrity. On a single 
 page of the guide-book to which I have referred you 
 (Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1875, p. 58), 
 you will find a statement of the names, country, condi¬ 
 tion, and date of life, of forty levitated persons. “ The 
 darker and less historical the age,” says this writer 
 (p. 52), “ the more miracles, but the fewer of these 
 phenomena [of levitation]. The testimonies to these, 
 absent so far as we can see in the ages from the fourth 
 century to the ninth, increase in number, respecta¬ 
 bility, and accuracy, from the latter to the present 
 day.” In this long list of instances, the levitations 
 occur as a rule in states of moral elevation, or trance. 
 “If levitation has occurred,” says this authority, “it 
 is natural. Under what conditions, we may never be 
 able the least to define; but whatever happens we 
 must call natural, whether the naturalness be clear to 
 few or many, to none or all of us (p. 39).” Profes¬ 
 sor Crookes thinks that if we can prove that Caesar 
 was assassinated, we can prove that there have been 
 cases of levitation. I do not agree with him. I think 
 it very doubtful whether we can now demonstrate 
 that physical levitation has occurred under the eyes 
 
78 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 of experts, or can be proved to the satisfaction of 
 men of science. But this fully accredited teacher has 
 a right to be heard in the majestic roar of the uncon¬ 
 quered surf of this unknown coast. Shakspeare is 
 there at the helm; he will draw the ship off in a 
 moment; but you must peer once in the name of sci¬ 
 ence, and of more than one advanced pilot of modern 
 thought, into this mist. Professor Crookes affirms 
 that if we are to be candid students of history, we 
 shall be very shy of denying that there never has 
 been physical levitation, as it is sometimes repre¬ 
 sented on the canvas of our great painters. Perso¬ 
 nally he has no doubt that it occurs in states of 
 moral trance. 
 
 We know something of what it is to be elastic 
 when we feel that we are right with God and man; 
 and that fact is a deep glimpse into this wheeling, 
 smiting mist. It is surely worth while, gazing in the 
 direction of this gleam of analogy and fact, to ask 
 whether there have been cases in which the human 
 form, under the highest activity of conscience, has 
 been lifted aloft. I do not ask you to accept Mr. 
 Crookes’s statements. I ask you only to note what 
 some leaders of the very latest science are saying, 
 and to keep an eye on the lee shore, meanwhile tak¬ 
 ing soundings every now and then. Keep well away 
 from the rocks of Spiritualism. [Applause.] There 
 are Mahlstroms in which, listening, it may be, to evil 
 spirits, man sometimes mistakes the moral downward 
 for the moral upward; and, gazing into the azure of 
 the wide, swift, smooth, circling sea at the whir] 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 79 
 
 pool’s edge until dizzy, persuades himself that its 
 inverted reflection is the sky; wishing two wives, 
 takes some gleam of a lie out of that lower azure 
 as his justification for having them; adopts the 
 Mahlstrom, in all its downward swirls, as an upper 
 heaven, and so plunges into its glassy throat, as 
 if he were ascending. Keep out of that. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] 
 
 Nevertheless I cannot discuss the topic of uncon¬ 
 troverted physical facts concerning conscience, with¬ 
 out asking you to notice in the name of Shakspeare 
 and all the common instincts on the one hand, and of 
 all of the latest research on the other, that a physical 
 tendency to levitation is a matter worth investiga¬ 
 tion. 
 
 But now, my friends, even if we could not make 
 any use of Mr. Crookes’s facts, we do know how tan¬ 
 gible the moral law is. We know that these gestures 
 upward and downward reveal subtle arrangements in 
 the connection of our organization with conscience; 
 that they indicate instincts; and that all instincts 
 have their correlates. Suppose that I could take 
 you no farther up this staircase, along its twenty 
 steps, than to the tenth or fifteenth. Suppose that 
 we cannot go up together over more than half these 
 steps: you who stand on the lower platform will yet, 
 when you look back, have an outlook worthy of 
 study. I know that I have an instinct by which my 
 gestures, in the midst of conscientious self-approval, 
 express command, repose, elasticity; and that when 
 conscience is against me I grovel naturally. Up and 
 
80 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 down are words physically proclaimed by natural law. 
 There is no reversing the relations of the peerage of 
 heaven. I want the culture that will bring me near 
 to the Court. I therefore must studiously examine 
 the only steps by which man can ascend toward the 
 gates that have foundations. I know that selfish 
 pride and self-approval through conscience are as 
 different as east and west. They are so far apart 
 that east and west, compared with them, have near¬ 
 ness and cohesion. A reposeful mood and peace are 
 given by a blissful supremacy of conscience, but 
 these are rarely conscious of themselves, as pride 
 always is. If the face has a solar light, it is usually 
 unconscious of the possession of that radiance. And 
 so, if a man have the approval of conscience, if the 
 upper nature be in blissful supremacy, he is usually 
 unconscious of his mood. No emotion has its full 
 strength until it is so profound that its possession is 
 not noticed by its owner. We are not fully given up 
 to any feeling until we not only have possession of 
 it, but become unconscious of the sorcery by which 
 it possesses us. The orator must not only have 
 possession of his subject, but his subject of him. 
 When it has possession of him, you are not con¬ 
 scious of him, nor is he of himself, but only of his 
 theme. 
 
 If I were able to go up only half the steps that 
 you have ascended here with me, I should feel my¬ 
 self other than an orphan in the universe. We ask 
 how God can be touched. How can we come near 
 to the ineffable Somewhat and Some One, that lies 
 
PHYSICAL TANGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 81 
 
 behind natural law? We are poor flowers opening 
 toward the noon. We have no eyes to see, and yet 
 we have nerves to feel. Do we need any thing more ? 
 We are sure that we have the nerves, and that we 
 touch the sunlight. We know scientifically that there 
 are an up and a down in natural law in its moral range. 
 We are as conscious of this moral gravitation as we 
 are of physical gravitation. We touch a Somewhat 
 that lifts us, and the absence of which leaves us to 
 sink to what appears to be a pit bottomless; and we 
 know that this gravitation is a natural law. But it 
 is a truth of science, that every natural law is the 
 constant operation of an Omnipresent Personal Will; 
 and, therefore, in the incontrovertible physical facts 
 illustrating moral gravitation as a natural law, have 
 we not the touchings of the Personal Omnipresence, 
 as much as the flower has the touchings of the sun¬ 
 light when it absorbs its beams ? [Applause.] 
 
 As feel the flowers the sun in heaven, 
 
 But sun and sunlight never see; 
 
 So feel I thee, O God, my God ! 
 
 Thy dateless noontide hid from me. 
 
 As touch the buds the blessed rain, 
 
 But rain and rainbow never see; 
 
 So touch I Thee in bliss or pain, 
 
 Thy far vast Rainbow veiled from me. 
 
 Orion, moon and sun and bow, 
 
 Amaze a sky unseen by me ; 
 
 God’s wheeling heaven is there, I know, 
 
 Although its arch I cannot see. 
 
82 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 In low estate, I, as the flower, 
 
 Have nerves to feel, not eyes to see; 
 
 The subtlest in the conscience is . 
 
 Thyself and that which toucheth Thee. 
 
 Forever it may be that I 
 
 More yet shall feel, and shall not see; 
 
 Above my soul thy Wholeness roll, 
 
 Not visibly, but tangibly. 
 
 But flaming heart to Rain and Ray 
 Turn I in meekest loyalty ; 
 
 I breathe and move and live in Thee, 
 
 And drink the Ray I cannot see. 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
 What of the Ascension ? It is said, to turn now 
 one glance upon the Scriptural record, that One, 
 whose face did shine as the sun in solar light, and 
 w 7 ho illustrated that radiance as no other member of 
 the human race has ever done since, as He blessed His 
 disciples was lifted up from them, and a cloud received 
 Him out of their sight. Will you quail here, when 
 you see the perfect unity between the natural law, 
 as I have endeavored to unfold it, and this action 
 of spiritual forces in that Member of the human race, 
 who, at the Transfiguration, illustrated the glorious 
 capacities of the same forces to give to the present 
 organic body solar light? I know that in 21 s there 
 is a levitating tendency 7 in a moral trance. I know 
 that as we pray, the fashion of our countenance is 
 altered. And it is recorded that as He prayed, the 
 fashion of His countenance was altered, and that as 
 
PHYSICAL TAKGIBLENESS OF THE MORAL LAW. 83 
 
 He blessed his disciples He was borne up from them. 
 Without controversy, great is the mystery of Godli¬ 
 ness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the 
 spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, be¬ 
 lieved on in the world, received up into glory. You 
 say that I am treading here upon the very edge of 
 blasphemy, in assuming that any natural law is con¬ 
 cerned in these summits of revealed fact. But, my 
 friends, the distinction between the natural and the 
 supernatural is one that may be stated in many ways. 
 The natural to me is merely God’s usual action, the 
 supernatural his unusual action. God’s will is uni¬ 
 form ; and if you and I experience some tendency to 
 stand erect when we are right with God, if you and 
 I have some tendency to spiritual levitation when 
 we are in a moral trance, who shall say, if our good¬ 
 ness had equalled that of the Soul that never sinned, 
 that we should not know what levitation is, as he 
 did ? 
 
 I am perfectly aware that I am venturing into un¬ 
 explored remainders of thought, but it is my purpose 
 to do so; for here, at the temple’s opening in this 
 structure which I am building, full of reverence for 
 conscience, I wish to erect two pillars, — two gor¬ 
 geous marble shafts, if you please to look on them as 
 I do, facts of science making them glorious,—two 
 columns, one on either side the door, — Solar Light 
 ind Moral Gravitation. Both are physical facts. 
 Both we can touch in the lower flutings of the 
 shafts; and we know by the argument of approach, 
 and by the whole scheme of analogical reasoning, 
 
84 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 that if the solar light were carried up to its loftiest 
 capacity, it might, at its summit, have the Transfig¬ 
 uration ; and if the laws of moral gravitation are 
 examined, and we ascend them to the highest point 
 to which analogy can take us up, we may, without 
 violating, by the breadth of a hair, scientific accuracy, 
 find there the Ascension. [Applause.] 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD’S VIEWS ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-FOURTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 OCT. 22. 
 
Und ein Gott ist, ein beiliger Wille lebt, 
 
 Wie aucb der menschliche wanke ; 
 
 Hoch tiber der Zeit und dem Raume webt 
 Lebendig der bdcbste Gedanke, 
 
 Und ob Alles in ewigem "Wecbsel krcisfc, 
 
 Es bebarret im Wechsel ein rubiger Geist 
 
 Schiller: Die Worte des Cftaubens, C 
 
 Se Dio veder tu vuoi, 
 
 Guardalo in ogni oggetto, 
 
 Cercalo nel tuo petto, 
 
 Lo troverai con te. 
 
 E se, dov’ ei dimora, 
 
 Non intendesti ancora, 
 
 Confondimi, *je puoi; 
 
 Dimini, dov ei non e ? 
 
 Metastasio: Betulia Liberata , iL 
 
IV. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD’S VIEWS ON CON- 
 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 Some of the gravest men in America were lately 
 seen in the city of Providence, throwing up their 
 caps as if they would hang them on the horns of the 
 moon. Eye-witnesses say that in Music Hall in that 
 sober municipality there were clappings and shout¬ 
 ings, thumping with canes and umbrellas, stampings 
 with feet, shaking hands, laughter, weeping for joy, 
 waving handkerchiefs, swinging of hats, and in some 
 cases the tossing of them into the air. What was 
 the cause of this demonstration ? Simply that a 
 penurious people had paid a debt incurred by 
 penuriousness. [Applause.] The friends of a most 
 venerable society, which has been known in all 
 zones for fifty years, are proud of having relieved 
 themselves, partly by the aid of secretaries who 
 =*re statesmen, and who act on democratically small 
 salaries, of a debt that was checking one portion 
 of the advance guard of aggressive religion on 
 
 benighted foreign shores. Five hundred thousand 
 
 87 
 
88 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 dollars are to be raised this year, we are told, to 
 strengthen this work at the front; and yet we are 
 assured that no new enterprises can be undertaken 
 with that sum. So penurious is America, that she 
 allows this assurance to be made in face of her opu¬ 
 lence, and does not feel ashamed. We have paid a 
 debt which we ought never to have incurred, and 
 we cannot raise money enough to make aggressive 
 advance; and we are loudly congratulating ourselves 
 while we have done painfully less than it is our duty 
 to do. 
 
 In the last seventy years the advances of Christian¬ 
 ity among those who never heard of it before have 
 been greater than in the first seventy years of the 
 apostolic age. Events not arranged by man have 
 opened all lands to religious truth. Three-fourths 
 of the missionaries under the control of the Ameri¬ 
 can Board may be reached by telegraph from Boston 
 within twenty-four hours. There are no foreign 
 shores. Sitting in his office yonder, a statesman 
 secretary with whom I conversed this morning told 
 me that on a Saturday a telegraphic despatch reached 
 him in Boston from a missionary in Japan; and that 
 a reply to it, shot over the wires through England, 
 Germany, Turkey, Asia Minor, India, and China, was 
 received in Japan from Boston the next Tuesday 
 morning; and that a missionary, acting upon intelli¬ 
 gence sent thus by 
 
 “ Thunderless lightnings smiting under seas,” 
 was then setting sail for America across the Pacific. 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 89 
 
 Look at the unexplored portions of the world, and 
 you will find that the telegraph is rapidly exploring 
 them; hut if a telegraph line can pass through Cen¬ 
 tral Asia, and almost through Central Africa, shall 
 we not send the missionary where commerce carries 
 tiie electric wire? 
 
 The truth is that men underrate the amount that 
 has already been done in .Africa. I hold in my hand 
 statistics which show that this darkest of the conti¬ 
 nents contains, including Madagascar, 130,000 church- 
 members, native born and in mission churches. Five 
 of the vigorous missionary societies of Great Britain 
 are now following up Livingstone to Lakes Tangan¬ 
 yika and Nyanza. Three individuals in the fat land 
 which we recognize as our mother-isle, and which we 
 never have equalled in opulence of gifts to religious 
 enterprises, gave each $25,000 for the purpose of 
 pushing missions in Africa. We have forty millions 
 of people, and Great Britain forty millions. All our 
 missionary societies together collected $1,800,000 in 
 1875. Those of Great Britain received $3,100,000. 
 In 1875 the American Board collected $468,000; the 
 Baptist Missionary Union, $241,000; the Methodist 
 Episcopal Board, $300,000; the Presbyterian Board, 
 $456,000. But in the same year the Gospel Propa¬ 
 gation Society in Great Britain received $400,000; 
 the London Missionary Society, $517,000; the Wes¬ 
 leyan Missionary Society, $500,000; and the Church 
 Missionary Society, $879,000. Our own Stanley is 
 following on the track of Livingstone, and we cannot 
 long consider the interior of Africa as wholly un- 
 
90 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 known. It is already well enough explored to allow 
 missions to be planted on the lakes discovered by 
 Livingstone. When Stanley shall come back, and 
 show us what Livingstone never saw, will it not be 
 fitting for our different missionary societies to lock 
 hands with each other as those of Great Britain have 
 done; and then to lock hands with hers, and see to 
 it that a permanent beam of light is shot through 
 this last dungeon on our planet ? 
 
 Long shadows fall from the western mountains of 
 China, and from the Himalayas northward, upon 
 a territory that has hardly yet been reached by 
 Christianity. More than nine-tenths of the popula¬ 
 tion of the Chinese Empire have never heard the 
 central truths of Christian civilization. But Japan 
 is filling with a dawn that will be a Day, and is rap¬ 
 idly crystallizing in the habits demanded by Chris¬ 
 tian custom. Six thousand towns between the Hima¬ 
 layas and Cape Comorin are Christian. The darkest 
 places are the interior of Africa, the islands between 
 Australia and Asia, and the centre of the Asiatic 
 continent. 
 
 LIow large is the field of the world ? Start in the 
 morning at San Francisco by railway, embark eight 
 days later on a steamer at New York or Boston, land 
 at some French port, take the railway to Brindisi, 
 cross the Mediterranean to the Pyramids, and you 
 have travelled eight thousand miles. That is the 
 distance through this little planet. Sometimes I sit 
 in my study, and turn about my globe, and remember 
 that it is no voyage at all to pass from the Golden 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 91 
 
 Gate to the Pyramids, and yet that this distance is 
 as great as the whole vaunted thickness of the soft- 
 rolling ball on which we wake and sleep. When 1 
 look out from the summit of my house-top, and see 
 the watery meridians of the Atlantic dropping down¬ 
 ward toward the east until they hide the hulls of 
 the vessels, and leave only thin top-gallants visible, 
 I find it not difficult to bend these aqueous curves 
 in and in around the little space of eisrht thousand 
 miles until they meet underneath my feet, and I feel 
 the whole globe afloat in the bosom of Omnipotence. 
 This little ball is all home to us. We are to go 
 hence; but while we are here, and looking off into 
 the vast spaces which may be the homes of souls, it 
 is our duty to see that no unexplored remainders are 
 left on this small globe. The iron fingers of com¬ 
 merce are often made to reach around it, as a part 
 of the sport of some merely mercantile enterprises. 
 Why, Lord Bacon shames us, for he says, “ Truly 
 merchants themselves shall rise in judgment against 
 the princes and the nobles of Europe; for the mer¬ 
 chants have made a great path in the seas, unto the 
 ends of the world, and sent forth ships and fleets 
 of Spanish, English, and Dutch, enough to make 
 China tremble; and all this for pearl, and stones, 
 and spices. But for the pearl of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, or the stones of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 or the spices of the Spouse’s Garden, not a mast 
 has been set up.” God is making commerce his 
 missionary. In this city, and in this audience, are 
 men whose fleets are in all the seas. 
 
92 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 It is well known to the closest observers, that it is 
 quite within the power of Christianity to make itself 
 audible by the voice or visible in the printed page, 
 before the end of this century, to every living 
 man. 
 
 In the United States in 1776 we had one evangeli¬ 
 cal minister to every twenty-four hundred of the 
 population: now we have one for every seven hun¬ 
 dred. In no other country has Christianity made 
 such outward advance ; and to no other land, there¬ 
 fore, are the words more emphatically uttered than 
 to ours, “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” 
 Our great cities are listening to tabernacles and to 
 steadily laboring churches. I suppose that there 
 has been as much activity put forth in America to 
 reach the masses at home, as in any other country; 
 but they who work most at home are the most will¬ 
 ing to work abroad; and those who are the most 
 willing to work abroad are the most willing to work 
 at home. Echo and re-echo! Those who feel that 
 the field is the world feel also most acutely that 
 their field is their own hearthstone. The reverse 
 is also true. Show me a man who is aggressive 
 in Boston, and I will show you a man who will be 
 aggressive on the Bosphorus, and under the shadows 
 of the Himalayas, and along the rivers of China; 
 who would establish Mount Holyokes and Welles¬ 
 leys in the South of Africa, and would brave the 
 fevers of the Gold Coast, and carry through the 
 centres of darkness a light such as commerce alone 
 has never diffused, such as only the Bible has shed 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 93 
 
 upon heathendom, — a light which diffuses conscien¬ 
 tiousness, and therefore allows property at last to be 
 safely diffused. [Applause.] 
 
 If, from a visible throne in the heavens, He whom 
 we dare not name were to send a troop of angels to 
 the centre of Africa, and another to the interior of 
 Asia, and another to Japan, and another to the isles 
 of the Pacific, and if, by the activity of these vis¬ 
 itants, there should be broken open a way for com¬ 
 merce in Japan, a way for missions in China, a way 
 for religious truth in the centre of Africa, we should 
 all bow down and adore before such a revelation of 
 the purposes of Providence. But a Power not of 
 man has sent visitants to Japan, and to the isles 
 of the sea, and to the centre of Asia, and the heart 
 of Africa. Treaties with once rusty hinges, whose 
 turning grated sounds of war, now move as if all 
 their joints were oiled. Bulwarks of ages have fallen 
 down. The interiors of continents not long ago 
 largely unknown to geography are open at this hour 
 to missions. These events are just as surely the re¬ 
 sults of Divine Providence as if they had been 
 brought about by bands of heavenly visitants. It 
 does not become us to exhibit elation because we 
 have treated Providence penuriously, and at last 
 have paid the debts into which we fell by lagging 
 behind Almighty God. We are not to be ashamed 
 of missions, for God evidently is not ashamed of 
 them. [Applause.] 
 
94 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 In 1786 Frederick the Great lay dying at Sana 
 Souci; and in 1865 Thomas Carlyle, face to face with 
 all the scepticism and doctrinal unrest and small 
 philosophy of our time, and with a mind free as 
 Boreas horsed on the north wind, sat down to de¬ 
 scribe the scene of Frederick’s departure. This all- 
 doubting man Frederick, a pupil of Voltaire, seemed 
 to have neither fear nor hope in death; but, says 
 Carlyle, there was one kind of scepticism which he 
 never could endure. “ Atheism, truly, he could not 
 abide. To him, as to all of us, it was flatly incon¬ 
 ceivable that intellect, moral emotion, could have 
 been put into him by an Entity that had none of its 
 own.” (Life of Frederick , vol. vi., last chapter.) Car¬ 
 lyle affirms that to all of us it is inconceivable, and 
 this flatly, that evolution can exceed involution ; or, 
 that we can have intellect, emotion, conscience, as the 
 gifts of a Power that has itself none of these to give. 
 
 You remember, gentlemen, that Webster, when 
 asked what his greatest thought was, looked about 
 on the company at a crowded dinner-table, and 
 asked, “ Who are here ? ” — 44 Only your friends.” — 
 44 The greatest thought that ever entered my mind 
 was that of my personal responsibility to a personal 
 God.” He expanded that idea in conversation for 
 ten minutes, and rose and left the table. Men stood 
 and sat in the hushed room, saying to each other, 
 44 Did you ever hear any thing like that ? ” But yon¬ 
 der, on the shore of the sea, this same Webster, clo& 
 
MATTHEW AENOLD’s VIEWS OH CONSCIENCE. 95 
 
 ing the greatest legal argument of his life, ■ — a doc¬ 
 ument which I now hold in my hands,—uttered the 
 same thought in words that I have read standing on 
 the coast there, and which have in them, whether 
 read there or here, or anywhere on this lonely shore 
 of existence, which we call life, a giant swell like the 
 roll of the Atlantic, an instinctive colossal tide found 
 in every soul that is possessed of the full equipment 
 of a man. “ There is no evil that we cannot either 
 face or flee from, but the consciousness of duty dis¬ 
 regarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is 
 omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves 
 the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
 parts of the sea, duty performed, or duty violated, 
 is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. It 
 we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness, 
 as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We 
 cannot escape their power, nor fly from their pres¬ 
 ence. They are with us in this life, will be with us 
 at its close ; and, in that scene of inconceivable so¬ 
 lemnity which lies yet farther onward, we shall still 
 find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of 
 duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to 
 console us so far as God has given us grace to per¬ 
 form it.” ( Weoaiers Works, vol. vi. p. 105.) 
 
 Flatly inconceivable that moral emotion, intellect, 
 can have been put into us by a Being that has none 
 of its own ! But Matthew Arnold says that neither 
 this inconceivability, nor any thing else, shows that 
 God is a person. It is a physical fact that Matthew 
 Arnold’s upper forehead is very flat. Here are Car 
 
96 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 lyle, Frederick the Great, Webster; and I might put 
 with them Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Kant, 
 Richter. Indeed, the latter says, speaking from ex¬ 
 perience, and for men of his own natural rank, that 
 the summit of every full-orbed nature suggests the 
 belief in God as a person. At the top of the great 
 hills in Italy, we commonly find chapels. Richter 
 affirms (Titan) that in the heights of every fully en¬ 
 dowed man, there is an instinct of obligation, or sense 
 of responsibility, which points to a personal God. 
 So Sehleiermacher said, and built a renowned and 
 to-day not uninfluential system of religious thought 
 upon the assertion; but he was a theologian. So 
 Kant taught in his theory of the practical reason; 
 and German philosophy at the present hour, however 
 shy of some of his outworks, dares build nowhere 
 else than on his fundamental principles; but he was 
 an ethical philosopher. Take only literary men, 
 take lawyers, take historians, take philosophers of no 
 school in ethics, and, as a general and very revelatory 
 rule, wherever they have been full-orbed, they have 
 found in the depths of their endowments, this deepest 
 instinct, — a sense of obligation, a feeling of depend¬ 
 ence. 
 
 “Below the surface stream, shallow and light, 
 
 Of what we say we feel; below the stream, 
 
 As light, of what we think we feel, — there flows, 
 With noiseless current strong, obscure, and deep, 
 
 The central stream of what we feel indeed.” 
 
 A highly important question in our vexed time is 
 whether we are to take for our general guides men 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 97 
 
 possessing the full range of natural endowments, or 
 fragments of men, brilliant, indeed, in parts of the 
 human equipment, but lacking several things that go 
 to make up a full-orbed man. I am'not here to as¬ 
 sail any person as naturally unequipped. But we are 
 most of us fragments: and Mr. Arnold admits, and 
 his critics have always insisted, that among his lim¬ 
 itations is a great deficiency of metaphysical insight. 
 “ Men of philosophical talents will remind us of the 
 truths of mathematics,” says Matthew Arnold himself, 
 “and tell us that the three angles of a triangle are un¬ 
 doubtedly equal to two right angles; yet, very likely 
 from want of skill or practice in abstract reasoning, 
 we cannot see the force of that proposition , and it may 
 simply have no meaning for us. The proposition is a 
 deduction from certain elementary truths, and the 
 deduction is too long or too hard for us to follow; 
 or, at any rate, we may have not followed it, or we 
 may have forgotten it, and therefore we do not feel 
 the force of the proposition.” “ Here it is, we sup¬ 
 pose, that one’s want of talent for abstract reasoning 
 makes itself so lamentably felt.” QGod and the 
 Bible, pp. 69, 70; London, 1875.) “Probably this 
 limited character of our doubting arose from our 
 want of philosophy and philosophical principles, 
 which is so notorious, and which is so often and so 
 uncharitably cast in our teeth.” (. Ibid , p. 62.) “ We 
 are so notoriously deficient in talents for metaphys¬ 
 ical speculation and abstruse reasoning, that our ad¬ 
 versaries often taunt us with it, and have held us 
 up to public ridicule, as being without a system of 
 
98 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 philosophy based on principles interdependent, sub* 
 ordinate, and coherent.” (.Literature and Dogma, 
 p. 389; London, fourth edition, 1874.) Matthew 
 Arnold admits that all metaphysics are to him “ the 
 science of non-naturals.” QGod and the Bible , p. 50.) 
 But by metaphysics we understand here, as people 
 do elsewhere, the science of self-evident truth, — a 
 systematic examination of axioms, with the inferences 
 that all men must draw from them, if they are only 
 true to the self-evident propositions which all admit. 
 Metaphysics may, indeed, be so treated as to be ob¬ 
 scure ; but metaphysics rightly treated is the lumi¬ 
 nous and exact science of self-evident truth. Matthew 
 Arnold flaunts it as a science of non-naturals; and, 
 because some proof of the existence of God is drawn 
 from metaphysics, he will have nothing to do with 
 any conclusion that stands on this pedestal, — an ab¬ 
 stract, all in the air, as he calls it. 
 
 Incontrovertibly we do not stand on any thing that 
 rests in the air when we stand on these ineradicable 
 human instincts which belong to every full-orbed 
 nature, — a feeling of dependence, a feeling of obli¬ 
 gation. Each is a part of us. We are so made that 
 we cannot doubt our finiteness. We are not every¬ 
 where ; we do not possess all power. There are lim¬ 
 itations of our being. But we have an idea of the 
 Infinite. We are circumscribed, and we have an idea 
 of a Being who is not. We do not comprehend him, 
 but we apprehend him. As individuals we began to 
 be. There is evidence that our race began to be. 
 Once man was not on the globe; he came into exist 
 
Matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 99 
 
 ence. Whatever begins to be must have a cause. 
 We cannot suppose that the Infinite has come forth 
 from the finite. We, the caused finite, must be the 
 work of the Infinite. In loyalty to self-evident truth, 
 we must put the finite in the relation of effect, and 
 the Infinite in the relation of cause; and so we begin 
 to feel sure, in the name of all clearness of thought, 
 that we can intellectually justify this instructive 
 sense of dependence. 
 
 There is an Eternal Power, not ourselves, on whom 
 we are dependent; this is, indeed, Arnold’s central 
 thought. Nothing is more beautiful in his writings 
 than the steady melody of one chord in his harp. 
 Most of the chords are too short, or twisted, or un¬ 
 duly strained; but there is one note in Matthew Ar¬ 
 nold which has a divine resonance, and that is his 
 passionate preception and proclamation of the nat¬ 
 ural victoriousness of right under the laws of the 
 universe. Everywhere he is the prophet of a Power, 
 not ourselves, which makes for righteousness; and 
 this central assertion of his he regards as a truth 
 of absolute science. He cannot decide whether the 
 Power is personal or not. He will not deny that it 
 is a person. The Edinburgh Review says to him, “All 
 existing things must be persons or things. Persons 
 are superior to things. Do you mean to call God a 
 thing?” Matthew Arnold replies, “We neither 
 affirm God to be a person nor to be a thing. \V e 
 are not at all in a position to affirm God to be the 
 one or the other. All we can really say of our ob¬ 
 ject of thought is that it operates” (Crod and the 
 
100 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Bible , pp. 97, 98.) There is in the universe an 
 Eternal Power which makes for righteousness. We 
 know this, as we know that fire burns by putting 
 our hands into the flame. It is not necessary to 
 decide whether this power is or is not a person. I 
 know by its operation on me, by its influence in uni¬ 
 versal history, by the instincts which point it out, 
 and by my sense of personal dependence and obliga¬ 
 tion, that it makes for righteousness. 
 
 Standing now on this common ground, I wish to 
 lead you up the heights which rise from it; and, 
 whether Matthew Arnold accompany us or not, I 
 know that others will, — the Kants and the Schlei- 
 ermachers, and the Richters, and the Ciceros, the 
 Platos and the Carlyles and even the Fredericks the 
 Great; and thus, if we go up without Matthew Ar¬ 
 nold, we shall not go up in bad company. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] 
 
 1. Conscience emphasizes the word ought. 
 
 2. That word expresses the natural, human, instinc¬ 
 tive sense of obligation to moral law. 
 
 3. It is everywhere admitted that this law was not 
 enacted, and that it is not reversible by the human 
 will. 
 
 4. It is imposed on us by an authority outside of 
 ourselves. 
 
 5. Our obligation is, therefore, to an authority out¬ 
 side of ourselves. 
 
 6. Our instinct of obligation is active even when we 
 are separated from all human government and society . 
 
 7. We cannot imagine ourselves to obliterate the dis * 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 101 
 
 tinction between right and wrong , even by the oblitera - 
 tion of all finite beings and of all immaterial nature. 
 
 I can imagine the putting out of all the fires of all 
 the hosts of heaven. I can imagine that all finite 
 being here and in the Unseen Holy is not. But I 
 cannot suppose that the putting out of existence of 
 all finite being would obliterate the distinction be¬ 
 tween upper and under, between the whole and a 
 part, between a cause and an effect, or between right 
 and wrong. The difference between the right hand 
 and left would yet inhere in the very nature of things, 
 were all finite existence swept out of the universe. 
 It would yet be true that there cannot be a before 
 without an after, that two straight lines cannot en¬ 
 close a space, and that there is a difference between 
 the whole and a part, and between right and wrong. 
 These propositions are self-evident truths, and depend 
 for their validity, not on the existence of the arch¬ 
 angels, or of the government of the United States, 
 or of Magna Charta, or of the human race. They 
 are revelations of the laws of the nature of things, 
 existing before Rome was founded, and, as Cicero 
 used to say, likely to retain their authority when all 
 human empires have been swept away. It is a very 
 strategic point that I am elaborating; but I believe, 
 now that I ask you to judge for yourselves, that I 
 carry your general assent in asserting that we may 
 imagine the annihilation of all finite existence, and 
 yet, after that, have the existence of a distinction 
 between the whole and a part, between a cause and 
 an effect, and between right and wrong. This latter 
 
102 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 distinction, however, is only another name for the 
 moral law; and so Webster is right. The sense of 
 duty pursues us ever. Even when these visible 
 heavens are rolled away, the moral constellations 
 remain, and pursue their accustomed courses in the 
 invisible heavens which never shall be rolled away. 
 
 8. On examination of personal consciousness it is 
 found, therefore, that this authority to which we owe 
 obligation is not immaterial nature, not the human- 
 race, not human government and society, nor finite 
 being in general. 
 
 All these things we can imagine annihilated, and 
 yet our sense of duty pursues us ever. The feeling 
 of obligation, that is, of the difference between right 
 and wrong, and that the right ought to be chosen 
 and that the wrong ought not, continues to follow us. 
 
 9. We know through conscience that we must 
 answer for what we are, and for what we do, to a 
 Power outside of us. 
 
 10. In the very nature of things, moral obligation to 
 answer for ourselves to a Power not ourselves can be 
 owed only to a Power that knows what we are and what 
 we do, and what we ought to do ; who approves of the 
 right, and disapproves of the wrong; and who has the 
 power and purpose to punish or reward us according to 
 our character and conduct. 
 
 11. Such being the facts of our moral nature, we 
 are under the necessity of assuming the existence of 
 such a Being or Power, by whatever name we call it. 
 
 12. Such a Being or Power, who knows what we 
 are and what we do, and what we ought to be and 
 
Matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 103 
 
 do, and who approves of the right, and disapproves 
 of the wrong, and who has the power and purpose to 
 punish or reward us according to our character and 
 conduct, — such a Being or Power is a personal God 
 on whom we are dependent, and to whom we owe ob¬ 
 ligation. [Applause.] 
 
 This is the argument by which Kant and Hamil¬ 
 ton, while denying the validity of all other arguments 
 for the existence of God, are forced to admit that our 
 nature compels us to believe that He is, and that 
 He is a Person. Probably this argument, which con¬ 
 vinces scholars more than any other, is the one which 
 convinces the mass of men more effectively than any 
 other form of reasoning from the organic instincts of 
 conscience. 
 
 Some men hold, and I will say nothing against 
 their reputation for scholarship, that the existence of 
 God is an intuition, or that we know that He exists 
 just as we know that every change must have a cause, 
 or that a whole is greater than a part. I, as you 
 are already aware, do not hold that the Divine exist¬ 
 ence is guaranteed to us by intuition. It is evident, 
 but not self-evident. It is guaranteed to us by a 
 single step of inference, from our deepest, surest, 
 most ineradicable instincts. When I analyze these, 
 I find the fact of God’s existence as a Person lying 
 capsulate, wrapped up in the sense of dependence and 
 of obligation, which are intuitions. I am just as sure 
 that i am a dependent being as I am that two and 
 two make four. I am just as sure that I am under 
 obligation to what ought to be, as I am that a whole 
 is greater than a part. 
 
104 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The difference between right and wrong in out 
 choices and intentions, you will find to be not only 
 evident, but self-evident. You will allow me here 
 and now, since I do not say the Divine existence is 
 guaranteed to us by intuition, to affirm that the dis¬ 
 tinction between right and wrong is thus guaran¬ 
 teed. That there is a distinction between rffiht and 
 wrong in choices, is beyond all controversy, just as it 
 is beyond all controversy that the whole is greater 
 than a part. One of these assertions is as self-evident 
 as the other. When we perceive this distinction be¬ 
 tween moral motives, we feel that we ought to obey 
 a good motive, and disobey a bad. Thus our sense of 
 obligation expressed by the word ought is guaranteed 
 by intuition as well as by instinct. Intuition stands 
 on one side of it, and instinct on the other. The feel¬ 
 ing that we ought to obey the right motive is the 
 instinct; the perception of the right motive is the 
 intuition. Conscience perceives the distinction be¬ 
 tween right and wrong in choices, and feels that the 
 right ought to be performed, and that the wrong ought 
 not to be. Thus direct intuition and organic instinct, 
 the two highest authorities known to man, guarantee 
 to us this sense of dependence and this sense of obli¬ 
 gation. In the study of conscience we stand between 
 the two pillars on which all surety rests; and, look¬ 
 ing upward along the flutings of these two shafts 
 of intuition and instinct, — perception of the differ¬ 
 ence between right and wrong in moral motives, and 
 feeling that the right ought to be followed and that 
 the wrong ought not, — we can throw an arch from 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 106 
 
 the capital of one shaft to that of the other, and on its 
 summit, the sense of dependence on the one side and 
 the sense of obligation on the other, we place upon 
 the keystone the lowermost corner of the house not 
 built with hands, the belief in a personal God to 
 whom we owe that obligation, and on whom we are 
 thus dependent. [Applause.] 
 
 If, however, you refuse, with Matthew Arnold, tc 
 examine self-evident truths as a science, I must ask 
 you to take the point of view of the microscope. 
 Here is a course of thought proceeding out of the 
 very heart of Biology: — 
 
 1. Some force forms the parts in an embryo. “We 
 are woven,” even Tyndall says, “ by a power not our¬ 
 selves.” 
 
 On the 1st of October, at the Midland Institute, 
 Professor Tyndall gave to the world knowledge of a 
 secret which most scholars have understood for ten 
 years. At the Midland Institute, in that city of Bir¬ 
 mingham, which is so well known to you, sir (turn¬ 
 ing to the Bev. Dr. Dale of England), Professor 
 Tyndall said to the robber, the ravisher, and the 
 murderer, “ You offend because you cannot help 
 offending.” (Report in London “ Times ” of Tyn¬ 
 dall’s lecture of Oct 1.) Hackel affirmed years ago, 
 in his History of Creation (vol. i. p. 237), that “ the 
 will is never free.” Some of you have thought it 
 extravagant to assert that this same teaching lies be¬ 
 tween the lines of many a page published by the 
 English materialistic school. Hackel is far bolder 
 than most of his followers, and he has proclaimed. 
 
106 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 pointedly that the will is never free; and now Tyn¬ 
 dall does the same. With much grace, with high 
 literary ability, and with all the prestige of his great 
 name, Professor Tyndall says to the murderer, “You 
 offend because you cannot help offending; we punish 
 you because we cannot help punishing.” Approba¬ 
 tion and disapprobation he would no more have as to 
 the overflow of the muddy torrent we call an Iago or 
 a Mepliistopheles than he would for the overflow of 
 the Rhine or the Mississippi. According to his scheme 
 of thought, we may put up dykes against Caligula 
 and Nero as we do against the Mississippi, but we are 
 not to have disapprobation for Caligula, or for Nero, 
 or for Catiline, any more than for the Tiber when it 
 overflows its banks into the marble temples of Rome. 
 We must say to the criminal, “You offend because 
 you cannot help offending.” These are Tyndall’s 
 own words, which Hermann Lotze would think hardly 
 worthy of a reply. They are not more penetratingly 
 mischievous than violently unscientific. 
 
 But even Tyndall asserts that we are woven by 
 something not ourselves. (Lecture at Birmingham, 
 Oct. 1.) Now, I affirm that when the embryo comes 
 into existence, some force forms its parts. The force 
 that forms the parts is the cause of the form of the 
 parts. The cause must exist before the effect. We 
 are sure of that, are we not ? My delicious and sur¬ 
 prising friends, who are sure of nothing except that 
 you are sure you are sure of nothing, thereby con¬ 
 tradicting yourselves, are you not certain that a 
 cause must exist before a change can be produced ? 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD’S VIEWS ON CONSCIENCE. 107 
 
 Very well: here I stand, with the process of the 
 weaving of a physical organism going on under my 
 microscope. Here is woven a lion, there a man, 
 here an oak, there a palm. From the first the plan 
 of each is in the embryo from which each begins 
 That plan must have been in existence before any 
 physical organization exists in the embryo. Even 
 yom Hackel says (“Popular Science Monthly,” 
 October, 1877, article on Bathybius, p. 652), that 
 “ Life is not a result of organization, but vice versa.” 
 It is demonstrable under the microscope, that life is 
 the cause of organization, and not organization the 
 cause of life. The plan must be in existence before 
 it is executed. A plan in existence and not executed 
 is a thought. The plan executed in the weaving of 
 an organism, therefore, was a thought before the or¬ 
 ganism was woven. That thought exists before the 
 organism. But thought implies a thinker. There 
 cannot be a thought without a thinker. The thought 
 executed in the organism does not belong to the 
 organism. The design is not in the thing designed: 
 it is outside the thing designed. The cause i^ out¬ 
 side of the effect. Thought, the force that forms the 
 embryo, is not in the embryo: it is outside the em¬ 
 bryo, for it exists before the embryo. Talk as you 
 please about force being inherent in all matter; or 
 of the tree Igdrasil, as Tyndall has lately said, being 
 the proper symbol of the universe : we know that the 
 cause must exist before the change it produces. This 
 plan by which the form of the embryo is determined 
 must be in existence somewhere before any form is 
 
108 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 woven. The first stroke of the shuttle, as we have 
 proved, implies a plan; and so we know that there 
 is in the universe a thought, not ourselves and not 
 our own. Adhere to that proposition, and use Des¬ 
 cartes’ great argument, — “I think: therefore I am a 
 person.” 
 
 2. Since we are woven by a power not ourselves, 
 there is thought in the universe not our own. 
 
 3. There cannot be thought without a thinker. 
 
 4. Therefore there is in the universe a thinker not 
 ourselves. 
 
 5. But a thinker is a person. [Applause.] 
 
 To put now the whole argument from design into 
 the shape which best pleased John Stuart Mill, we 
 may say: — 
 
 1. Every change must have an adequate cause. 
 
 2. My coming into existence as a mind, free-will, 
 and conscience, was a change. 
 
 3. That change requires a cause adequate to ac¬ 
 count for the existence of mind, free-will, and con¬ 
 science. 
 
 4. Involution must equal evolution. 
 
 5. Only mind, free-will and conscience, in the cause, 
 therefore, are sufficient to account for mind, free-will, 
 and conscience in the change. 
 
 6. The cause, therefore, possessed mind, free-will, 
 and conscience. 
 
 T. The union of mind, free-will-, and conscience in 
 any being constitutes personality in that being. 
 
 8.' The cause, therefore, which brought me into 
 existence as a mind, free-will, and conscience, was a 
 person. 
 
matthew aenold’s views on conscience. 109 
 
 If you will look at that list of propositions, you 
 will find nothing taken for granted in them except 
 that every change must have an adequate cause. 
 I suppose them to be substantially the ground on 
 which established science stands to this hour, with 
 the Richters, and the Carlyles, and Platos, and Aris- 
 totles, and even with the all-doubting Fredericks. 
 
 We may say also, in presenting further the argu¬ 
 ment from design: — 
 
 1. If there is an omnipresent, self-existing, and 
 infinitely holy moral law, and if the nature of all 
 dependent intelligence has been adapted to that law, 
 there must be a moral designer to account for this 
 moral adaptation. 
 
 2. There are such a law and such an adaptation. 
 
 3. There is, therefore, a moral designer. 
 
 4. But a moral designer must possess mind, free¬ 
 will, and conscience. 
 
 5. The union of mind, free-will, and conscience in 
 any being constitutes personality in that being. 
 
 6. The moral designer of the moral law is, there¬ 
 fore, a person. 
 
 John Stuart Mill advised all who would prove the 
 Divine Existence to adhere to the argument from 
 design. Even Matthew Arnold says that all he can 
 say against the argument from design is, that he has 
 had no experience in world-building. “We know 
 from experience that men make watches, and. bees 
 make honeycombs. We do not know from experi¬ 
 ence that a Creator of all things makes ears and 
 buds.” (God and the Bible , pp. 102, 103.^ VVRat 
 
110 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 if Red Cloud and Chief Joseph had been brought to 
 the Centennial or to Washington? What if they 
 had seen the majestic dome of our national Capitol, 
 and all the marvels of the Centennial ? Red Cloud 
 would have said, if he had followed Matthew Arnold’s 
 philosophy, “ I have had experience in building wig¬ 
 wams. I know the path from my house to the hut 
 of Seven Thunders or Bear Paw. I know that every 
 such path is made by some cause. I know that every 
 wigwam must have been built by some man. But 
 this railroad, — I never had experience in building 
 railroads, — I do not know but that it was fished out 
 of the sea. This marble Capitol, these wonderful and 
 strange things in the Centennial! I have never had 
 anj 7- experience in making columbiads or spinning-jen¬ 
 nies. I know that the flint which I sharpen for my 
 arrow must be shaped by some man; but this colum- 
 biad, I do not know but that it grew. This spinning- 
 jenny ! I have had no experience in factories and 
 weaving-machines and these marvels. I think this 
 loom was evolved ! ” [Applause.] 
 
 I do not in the slightest degree misrepresent the 
 reasoning of Mr. Arnold; for the only objection he 
 has to the argument from design is that he has had 
 no experience in world-building. David Hume also 
 once made that assertion; but when he walked with 
 Adam Ferguson on the heights of Edinburgh one 
 night, and studied the constellations, he said, “ Adam, 
 there is a God.” 
 
 Stuart Mill admits that the argument from design 
 proves the existence of a designer; but whether we 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. Ill 
 
 can prove that the designer thus proved to exist is 
 the only designer in the universe, is, as some people 
 think, yet left in doubt. Paley’s argument is sup¬ 
 posed to be overthrown. A watch implies a watch¬ 
 maker; but how do we know that there was not 
 a designer of the watchmaker, or that there is not a 
 second God that designed the first God, and a third 
 that designed the second, and so on ? A design must 
 have had a designer, and the designer a designer, and 
 this designer a designer; for every design is to have 
 a designer. Do not suppose that I am here to dodge 
 this difficulty, although occasionally it may be that 
 some of our theological teachers have evaded it. I 
 have heard that Lyman Beecher was once approached 
 by his students with the question how they should 
 answer sceptics who told them that the argument 
 from design proved too much. “ They say to us,” 
 the students told their teacher, “ that there may be 
 twenty Gods, for every design must have a designer, 
 and every designer a designer, and so on.” Now, 
 Lyman Beecher did not know how to answer that 
 difficulty, or at least he did not give the scientific 
 answer; but he was quick in thought, and so he said 
 to his students, “ These men say there are twenty 
 Gods ? ” — “ Yes.” — “ Well, you tell them that if 
 there is one God it will go hard with them, and if 
 there are twenty it will go harder yet.” [Applause.] 
 But the answer to be made is that we cannot have 
 s dependent existence without an independent or a 
 self-existent being to depend upon. All existence, 
 to put the argument in syllogistic form, is either 
 
112 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 dependent or independent. Yon are sure of that? 
 Yes. Well, if there is a dependent existence, there 
 must be an independent, for there cannot be depend¬ 
 ence without something to depend upon; and an 
 infinite series of links receding forever is an effect 
 without a cause. Your axiom that every change 
 must have an adequate cause is denied by the theory 
 of an infinite series. You carry up your chain, link 
 after link, and there is nothing to hang the last link 
 upon. 
 
 1. All possible existence is either dependent or 
 independent. 
 
 2. If there is dependent existence there must be 
 independent existence, for there cannot be depend¬ 
 ence without dependence on something; an endless 
 chain without a point of support is an effect without 
 a cause; dependence without independence is a con¬ 
 tradiction in terms. 
 
 3. I am a dependent existence. 
 
 4. Therefore there is independent existence. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] 
 
 But independent existence is self-existence. 
 
 1. All possible being is either self-existent or not 
 self-existent. 
 
 2. If there is being which is not self-existent, the 
 principle that every change must have an adequate 
 cause requires that there should exist being that is 
 self-existent. 
 
 3. I am a being that is not self-existent. 
 
 4. Therefore there is being that is self-existent. 
 
 So, too, with exact loyalty to self-evident truth, 
 
 we may say: — 
 
matthew Arnold’s views on conscience. 113 
 
 1. All possible persons are either self-existent or 
 not self-existent. 
 
 2. If there exist a person that is not self-existent, 
 there must be a person that is self-existent. 
 
 3. I am a person not self existent. 
 
 4. Therefore there is a Person who is self-existent. 
 This is He. 
 
 In these arguments nothing is assumed but self- 
 evident truths, which all men act upon in business, 
 and take as certain at the fireside. The deep human 
 instincts of conscience proclaim all that our meta¬ 
 physics do. Science, standing upon axioms, knows 
 no more at last than the man full-orbed, who allows 
 every tide in him to rise according to untaught in¬ 
 stinct, and finds that when he swells aloft under the 
 natural attraction felt by the sense of obligation and 
 dependence, he touches the stars. If you are a thin 
 brook; if you are under the torrid sun of scepticism; 
 if there are no great waves in you that can kiss the 
 heavens at times, — you may be. in doubt. But let 
 your nature become oceanic, and feel all that can 
 come to you from the winds, and from the springs, 
 and from the search of the depths; and then, when 
 the Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous¬ 
 ness, rides the waves, you will find that the highest 
 instincts in you touch Him far aloft, as a Person. 
 [Applause.] 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-FIFTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 OCT. 29. 
 
The Moral Sense, thank God, is a thing you never will account 
 for; that, if you could think of it, is the perennial Miracle of Man; in 
 all times visibly connecting poor transitory man here on this bewil¬ 
 dered earth with his Maker who is eternal in the Heavens. 
 
 Carlyle: Shooting Niagara: and after ?\ i. 
 
 Das Gewissen ist das Organ zur Manifestation der gottlichen 
 Gerechtigkeit im menschlichen Selbstbewusstsein. 
 
 Hofmann: Das Gewissen , ii. 
 
V. 
 
 ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 PEELUDE ON CTJEEENT EVENTS. 
 
 Suppose that there should be called into existence 
 in the Eastern or Western States a million voters 
 unable to read. Were the Northern portion of the 
 Union suddenly saddled with danger of this kind, 
 our vigor would bestir itself, no doubt, to shake off 
 the incubus of so large a mass of enfranchised ignor¬ 
 ance. But the Southern States have had brought 
 into their borders lately, by an act of our General 
 Government, one million voters unable to read. The 
 population of the territory which we call the South 
 is slightly larger than that of the Eastern and Mid¬ 
 dle States, or than that of the section which we call 
 the West. Whether you approve the policy of the 
 Chief Executive of this nation or not, it is one of 
 pacification. We placed the flat side of the sword 
 on the neck of the South for a while, after the keen 
 edge had caused her to surrender. We kept the fiat 
 edge of the bayonet on her neck in order to secure 
 peace at elections, and peace for the freedman’s lonely 
 
 school on the edge of the Dismal Swamp, and peace 
 
 117 
 
118 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 for all unarmed men at night. We did not always 
 secure what we wished. But now the flat side of 
 the bayonet and of the sword has been taken off. 
 There is no method of managing enfranchised 
 ignorance at the South, except by educating the 
 freedmen. 
 
 It would be a felicity if this audience could 
 assemble in imagination in some freedman’s solitary 
 schoolhouse in the Florida Everglades, or under the 
 moss-hung pines of the Carolinas and Mississippi, 
 and meditate there a moment on the duties of the 
 North toward uneducated voters created by its own 
 act. Once in personal contact with the South, we 
 find a strange land, fat, semi-tropical in places, 
 capable of great wealth, but many old plantations 
 are covered with weeds. If the Confederate soldiers 
 in their graves could come back, they would find 
 not a few of their old homes unrecognizable. Capi¬ 
 tal was greatly centralized by slavery, and now it is 
 being decentralized. The only prosperous portions 
 of the new South are the regions where men have 
 started small farms, and operate them upon the prin¬ 
 ciple that machinery is to be used and labor paid for. 
 In cases where small farms have decentralized capi¬ 
 tal, prosperity is slowly returning to the Gulf States. 
 Even in those quarters of the South where free labor 
 is thus tardily acquiring honor, the negro is in 
 debt. He is paid for his labor, but he is in debt 
 at the country store. Authorities exceptionally well 
 acquainted in the South assert that these debts at 
 the corner groceries are carefully fostered. The 
 
OKGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 119 
 
 freedman does not easily buy land in the South. 
 The citizen who was lately a slave is paid very 
 little for his labor, and falls into debt. He can¬ 
 not leave the farm on which he lives, unless his 
 debts are cancelled. It is the scheme of many an 
 old master, that these debts shall not be too swiftly 
 paid. Put your ear to the ground in some of the 
 best society in the Middle States, and you will find 
 not a little tremor there from the fear that a time 
 may come within fifty years when a large part of the 
 black race will fall into the condition of the Mexican 
 peons, held in a kind of qualified bondage for debt. 
 If you do not anticipate trouble from that source, it 
 is yet certain that many do; and I cannot undertake 
 to assert, at this distance from the scene, that there 
 is not a threat in that cloud which lies half out of 
 sight along the Southern horizon. [Applause.] 
 
 But there are much blacker clouds there. A 
 strange land this, over the mellow acres of which 
 we gaze from the windows of our freedman’s school- 
 house. Twenty-five and five-tenths per cent of the 
 population of the South over ten years of age cannot 
 read. Thirteen millions are here, and a quarter of 
 them need to use the spelling-book yet. I speak 
 with all sympathy for a section of our nation which 
 has exhibited great bravery, and is certainly able to 
 educate its citizens if it has the will to do so. But 
 it has not had that will. At this moment, it is true 
 that my native State of New York spends more for 
 education than all the South. If your uneducated 
 freedmen were as well educated as the average 
 
120 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Southern white men, they would not he well enough 
 educated to take care of themselves, and become in¬ 
 telligent voters. Thirty-nine per cent of the voters 
 of the South cannot read the names of the candi¬ 
 dates printed on their ballots. Three and eight- 
 tenths per cent of the Middle States and New Eng¬ 
 land are illiterate, — that is, of the population over 
 ten years of age, that percentage cannot read. 
 Three and four-tenths per cent only of the Western 
 States are illiterate. I whisper this in Boston: we 
 are behind the upper part of the Mississippi valley. 
 In Alabama fifty-three per cent of the voters are 
 illiterate; even in Kentucky twenty-eight per cent 
 are illiterate ; in Maryland twenty-two; in Delaware 
 twenty-four. Of the 2,000,000 illiterate voters in 
 the United States, 1,700,000 are in the Southern 
 States, which elect 32 of the 74 senators and 109 of 
 the 292 representatives in Congress. 
 
 Here is a mass of uneducated suffrage, and who is 
 exploiting it ? Look at the negro in his schoolhouse. 
 Behind him is his master, to whom he is in debt; and 
 on the other side of him is a strange figure in Amer- 
 V ican politics, not often seen in our land, but one that 
 has been potent in the politics of other lands. This 
 historic form wears ecclesiastical robes. I open 
 authentic documents concerning the condition of the 
 freedmen, and find them resolving the other day, in a 
 grave public assembly at Macon: “ That this meeting 
 appoint a committee to wait upon the Rt. Rev. Bish¬ 
 op Gross, who is now in this city, to obtain his views 
 as to the educational policy of the Catholic Church 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 121 
 
 in regard to the colored people of the South, and to 
 ascertain to what extent we may look to that organi 
 zation for assistance in the work of educating our 
 children.” Other documents assure us that from 
 Baltimore there has lately been projected a great 
 aggressive campaign upon the South. New schools 
 for colored children are to be immediately opened, 
 ten in Georgia, fifteen in Alabama, twenty-five in 
 Louisiana. These Romish schools will offer board 
 and tuition free to colored young men and women. 
 If the uneducated suffrage of North and South in 
 one mass is ever to be exploited by a single hand on 
 the Tiber, a serious hour is ahead of us. 
 
 Rolling through the Berkshire hills, a few days 
 since, and up the fat valley of the Mohawk to Syra¬ 
 cuse, to address an audience for the purpose of arous¬ 
 ing interest in the efforts of Protestant free schools 
 in the South, I studied on the way the case of the 
 six thousand pupils of these struggling, heroic insti¬ 
 tutions at Nashville and Atlanta and Talledega and 
 Memphis. So great was the contrast of their pov¬ 
 erty with the opulence of the Connecticut, the Hud¬ 
 son, and the Mohawk valleys I glided through, that I 
 found myself growing sick at heart as I looked out 
 of the car-windows. Schools for freedmen in the 
 South depend yet almost exclusively upon the 
 North for their support. No doubt the freedmen 
 help themselves as far as they can, but they are 
 exceedingly poor. There are men who wish to teach 
 their brethren, both in secular things and divine; 
 and they are burning pine-knots instead of candles. 
 
122 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 for they cannot pay for the latter. They wish to go 
 out five, ten, fifteen miles into the country, and can¬ 
 not pay their railway fares; and so for any distances 
 under twenty miles they walk. Again and again 
 their lonely visits in the country-side are subjected 
 to insults from roughs of the poor white class. A 
 negro preacher is not a welcome guest at a planter’s 
 mansion. It is only yesterday that the South had 
 in it armed bands which often prevented negroes 
 from voting. Freedmen’s schoolhouses, including 
 churches used as schoolhouses, have now and then 
 been burned. Whole tiers of counties were subjected 
 to political terrorism. No doubt the negro has made 
 mistakes. He had a majority in Mississippi; and he 
 did not act there like a saint, but very like an unedu¬ 
 cated black rascal. He did things in his official capa¬ 
 city to which I would not have submitted, had I been 
 a citizen in that State; but he acted as it was to have 
 been expected that he would, without education, and 
 with slavery behind him. In South Carolina, the 
 black man has a majority; and he has not acted 
 there like a citizen understanding his duties, but like 
 an uneducated freedman. He has gone to the wall 
 in Mississippi, in spite of being in a majority. He 
 will go to the wall in South Carolina, in spite of 
 being in a majority there. If you would keep him 
 from being pressed to flatness against that wall, you 
 must do so by ringing his school and college bells. 
 
 In the cause of the freedman, the bugles of Gettys¬ 
 burg were once at the front; the bugles of Antietam, 
 the bugles of Lookout Mountain. But to-day in that 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 123 
 
 cause, as holy now as ever, the only sounds we hear 
 at the front are affrighted, half-choked noises of 
 school and college bells. [Applause.] You who 
 answered the bugles at Antietam, you who answered 
 the roll of the drums in the smoke of Lookout 
 Mountain, you who understand how many unknown 
 graves there are in the South, will you not hear the 
 confused noise of the freedmen’s college bells, and 
 follow them with righteous and victorious aid, as 
 once you followed the bugles ? [Applause.] 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 Plato used to say that a ship is all but its wood. 
 The eloquent shaft on Bunker Hill yonder is not 
 fully analyzed by us when we take into view only 
 its granite. The various parts together exhibit a 
 plan; but all the parts taken separately, and with¬ 
 out that plan, are not the monument. The parts of 
 any mechanism without their plan are not equal to 
 the whole. Here is the human eye, or ear, or hand; 
 and each contains more than the sum of all its visi¬ 
 ble parts. We know that the eye consists of several 
 distinct portions; and when these and their colloca¬ 
 tions are examined separately we find that they have 
 only one thing in common, namely, the fitness to 
 produce, when each part is co-ordinated with the rest, 
 the organ of sight. We have lenses; we have aque¬ 
 ous and vitreous humors; we have eyelashes; we 
 have the iris; we have the miraculous retina; and, 
 if these were seen in separation from each other, we 
 might at first be unable to find any similarity be* 
 
124 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 tween them. The retina is not like the cr) stalline 
 Lenses. The substance of which the iris is composed 
 is in great part very different from that of which the 
 lashes consist. Nevertheless, when we study the 
 parts more minutely we find that they have one 
 thing in common, — an adaptation to be a part of 
 a multiplex whole, constituting an organ of sight. 
 Now, that common element in them all is something, 
 if you please. It must not be overlooked by the 
 scientific method. There exists undeniably a com¬ 
 mon element in all the parts of the eye and in their 
 collocations, and it must have had' an adequate 
 cause. When all the parts are put together, they 
 constitute an organ of sight; but that sight itself 
 does not spring up until the parts are put together. 
 If the shape of any one part be changed materially, 
 or its collocation altered, sight ceases or is impaired. 
 Every part has such a relation to the whole, that 
 each harmonizes with all the rest in an adaptation to 
 produce an organ of sight; and so we feel sure that 
 the adequate cause of that adaptation must have had 
 in view sight as the result of this one common ele¬ 
 ment in all the portions of the eye. The only ade¬ 
 quate cause is something that intended to produce 
 sight at the end of the process which brought into 
 existence these parts and their arrangement. 
 
 Whether the parts came together by evolution, 
 or by special creation; whether God’s will operated 
 through unchanging laws or by a special act, to 
 produce the eye, we know that somewhere this 
 adaptation of each part to the one aptitude of the 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 125 
 
 whole mechanism must have had a sufficient cause. 
 Even John Stuart Mill, sceptic as he was on many 
 points, admits explicitly that we cannot explain the 
 adaptation of part to part in the eye without sup¬ 
 posing that the idea of sight goes before the adapta¬ 
 tion of these pieces to each other in such a manner 
 as to produce sight. There must be an idea before 
 we can have a plan; and here an idea plainly existed 
 before the effects it produces. The effects are the 
 various parts of the eye and their adaptation to 
 sight; but sight starts up only at the end of a long 
 process. The idea of sight as an end to be attained 
 must have been in existence somewhere, when the 
 adaptation of piece to piece was secured. That idea 
 we prove to exist, not by analogy merely, but by 
 induction. “This,” Mill says in his last book (Three 
 Essays on Religion , American edition, pp. 171, 172), \i 
 “ I conceive to be a legitimate inductive inference. 
 Sight, being a fact not precedent but subsequent 
 to the putting together of the organic structure 
 of the eye, can only be connected with the produc¬ 
 tion of that structure in the character of a final, not 
 an efficient cause; that is, it is not sight itself, but 
 an antecedent idea of it, that must be the efficient 
 cause. But this at once marks the origin as pro¬ 
 ceeding from an intelligent will.” This logician 
 makes this last stupendous concession, because he 
 knows very well that there cannot be an idea with¬ 
 out a mind to contain it. There cannot be a thought 
 without a thinker, any more than there can be an 
 upper without an under, a before without an after, 
 
126 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 a here without a there. Reasoning, therefore, upon 
 the strictest principles of inductive logic, applying 
 all the tests of the scientific method, Stuart Mill’s 
 conclusion is that an antecedent Idea of sight must 
 be the cause of sight, and that this Idea must have 
 existed in a Being possessing an intelligent Will. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 Herbert Spencer very inexcusably mistakes the 
 force of such reasoning as this of Mill’s, and calls it 
 the carpenter theory of the universe. Spencer’s own 
 scheme of thought, involving implicitly, as Hackel’s 
 does explicitly, the assertion that organisms have 
 come into existence by spontaneous generation or 
 fortuitous concourse of atoms, shaken about like 
 dice in a dicer’s box, I call the dicer’s theory of the 
 universe. For one, I prefer the carpenter theory to 
 the dicer’s theory; but I hold neither the one nor the 
 other. Mill discusses the dicer’s theory, and is of 
 course candid enough to admit that “ this principle 
 does not pretend to account for the commencement of 
 sensation, or of animal or vegetable life.” tie 
 weighs all his syllables, and commits himself and 
 his philosophical reputation in the last year of his 
 life to the proposition that “ it must be allowed that 
 the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of 
 probability in favor of creation by Intelligence.” 
 (Three Essays on Religion , p. 174.) “The number 
 uf instances [of such adaptations] is immeasurably 
 greater than is, by the principles of inductive logic, 
 required for the exclusion of a random concurrence 
 of independent causes, or, speaking technically, foi 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 127 
 
 the elimination of chance.” (Ibid., p. 171.) Thus 
 Herbert Spencer failed to convert the last of the 
 world’s great logicians to the dicer’s theory so dear 
 to all materialistic schools of thought. Scientific 
 Theism holds neither the carpenter theory nor the 
 dicer’s theory of the origin of the universe, but 
 asserts Goethe’s proposition: — 
 
 “Who of the living seeks to know and tell, 
 
 Strives first the living Spirit to expel, — 
 
 He has in hand the separate parts alone, 
 
 But lacks the spirit-bond that makes them one.” 
 
 It is the supreme principle of Herbert Spencer’s 
 philosophy, as well as of Sir William Hamilton’s, 
 that any thing we cannot help believing, or any 
 proposition of which the opposite is utterly incon¬ 
 ceivable, we must hold to be true. This has been 
 the fundamental principle of every philosopher 
 worthy of the name since Aristotle. Utter incon¬ 
 ceivability, I claim, inheres in the proposition that 
 this adaptation of part to part in the eye can be 
 produced without the preceding idea of sight. Utter 
 inconceivability lies behind all atheistic thought. So 
 too, it lies behind all thought which does not deny 
 that God exists, but denies that we can know that he 
 does. This agnostic theory never makes a scientific 
 use of axioms; it denies the power that inheres in 
 necessary beliefs; asserts with Spencer that we must 
 consider as true our necessary beliefs; and then with 
 him denies that these beliefs carry us out to the idea 
 of an Intelligent or Personal First Cause. 
 
128 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Thus far I have endeavored to lead you through 
 this lecture, as through the last, over the ground of 
 Induction, based upon Intuition. But, to turn now 
 to the ground occupied by the great Organic In 
 stincts of Conscience, it is not uncommon to find 
 even materialism admitting that men instinctively 
 think of God as Personal. It is often conceded that 
 our instincts point that way, but we are assured that 
 our instincts mislead us. We have been miseducated. 
 There are lying faculties in us. Our profoundest 
 tendencies raise false expectations. It is on this 
 verge of the wildest kind of scepticism, on this edge 
 of what the schools call Pyrrhonism, on this border of 
 the denial of all self-evident truth, that I wish to 
 call pause to-day for a moment, in the name of the 
 axioms of science. 
 
 Here is the best book on the scientific method that 
 has been produced since the death of Sir William 
 Hamilton. You will all allow me to say that the 
 Principles of Science, by Professor Stanley Jevons, 
 is a standard work; but he closes his hundreds of 
 pages, filled with the most careful analysis of logical 
 forms, with these very incisive sentences: “ Among 
 the most unquestionable rules of Scientific Method is 
 that first law, that whatever phenomenon is, is. We 
 must ignore no existence whatever; we may variously 
 interpret or explain its meaning and origin, but if a 
 phenomenon does exist, it demands some kind of an 
 explanation. If men do act, feel, and live, as if 
 they were not merely the brief products of a casual 
 conjunction of atoms, but the instruments of a far- 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 129 
 
 reaching purpose, are we to record all other phe¬ 
 nomena, and pass over these ? We investigate the 
 instincts of the ant and the bee and the beaver, and 
 discover that they are led by an inscrutable agency 
 to work toward a distant purpose. Let us be faith¬ 
 ful to our scientific method, and investigate also those 
 instincts of the human mind by which man is led to 
 work as if the approval of a Higher Being were the 
 aim of life.” (Jevons, Professor W. Stanley, of 
 University College, London: The Principles of Sci¬ 
 ence, a Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method, pp. 
 469, 4T0. London, 1874.) 
 
 Here speaks no theologian, no partisan, not even 
 an anti-evolutionist, although Jevons is an anti- 
 materialistic evolutionist, as every man of sense 
 ought to be. Sneers about the carpenter theory, 
 from one who thinks the dicer’s the better, are quite 
 out of place, face to face with that majestic perora¬ 
 tion of Jevons. Let us be everywhere mercilessly 
 true to the scientific method. Since man does pos¬ 
 sess instincts by which he is led to act as if the 
 approval of a Higher Being were the end of life, we 
 are to investigate these instincts at least as search- 
 ingly as we do those of the bee, the ant, and the 
 beaver. 
 
 1. Instinct is an exhibition of intelligence in but 
 not of the being to which the instinct belongs. 
 
 Your bee builds according to mathematical rule; 
 but do you suppose that all the intelligence it ex¬ 
 hibits is in an intellect possessed by that insect? 
 Has it planned, has it thought out geometrical prob* 
 
130 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 lems, and at last ascertained in what style to con 
 struct the honeycomb? None of us believe that. 
 We hold that the bee works by instinct, and the 
 difference between instinct and reason is very broad. 
 Instinct never improves its works, but reason does. 
 The bird builds her nest now as she did before the 
 flood, and the honeycomb is the same to-day as it 
 was in the carcass of the lion when Samson went 
 down to Jordan. Instinct copies itself, and no more. 
 It builds better than it knows. But Somewhat 
 knows how well it builds. 
 
 Somewhat knows, did I say ? What a contradic¬ 
 tion it is to affirm that Somewhat knows ! Some ■ 
 what does not know any thing. Somewhat is no¬ 
 body. You all admit with Matthew Arnold that 
 behind Conscience there is a Somewhat, but you ask 
 whether behind the Somewhat there is a Some One. 
 When Matthew Arnold says that an Eternal Power 
 not ourselves loves righteousness, he is introducing 
 surreptitiously the idea of a Some One behind the 
 Somewhat. Some One loves; Some One may fight 
 intelligently for righteousness; but Somewhat never 
 
 does or can love. The eternal Somewhat who loves 
 
 * 
 
 righteousness! Self-contradictions pervade the most 
 characteristic phrases of Arnold. He constantly 
 introduces the idea of Some One in his citations of 
 Biblical language and in his own sometimes very 
 happy phrases. They are happy chiefly because they 
 conceal and effectively use under the cloak of rhetoric 
 the very ideas he opposes. The Some One he will 
 not name explicitly; but he constantly uses the idea 
 
OKGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 131 
 
 of Some One implicitly. He asserts the existence of 
 a Somewhat, but he will not admit the existence 
 of a Some One except surreptitiously, using the idea 
 though not confessing its existence. Assuredly, if 
 we are to follow Mill in this examination of the eye, 
 with which I opened our discussion, we must suppose 
 that the idea of the honeycomb exists before the 
 honeycomb, as the idea of the eye goes before the 
 eye. The idea must exist somewhere before the plan 
 of these structures existed. Somewhere there must 
 have been an adequate cause of the adaptation of 
 part to part in the honeycomb. 
 
 Almost imperceptible creatures in the sea build in 
 the Indian Ocean a goblet. It is called Neptune’s 
 cup. Sometimes it has a height of six feet and a 
 breadth of three. It is erected solely by myriads 
 of polypi, fragile animals shrunk within their holes 
 and only half issuing in order to plunge their micro¬ 
 scopically small arms into the waves. (Potjchet, 
 The Universe , p. 59.) One of these creatures, strug¬ 
 gling to keep its position on some reef, made, perhaps, 
 by the graves of its predecessors, begins to build with¬ 
 out any consultation with its swarming mates. They 
 all build, and they fashion little by little the base of 
 the goblet. They then carry up the long slender 
 stem. They have no consultation with each other in 
 their homes under the sea. Each works in a separate 
 cell; each is as much cut off from communication 
 with every other as an inmate of a cell in the wards 
 of Charlestown prison yonder is from his associates. 
 They build the stem to the proper height, and then 
 
132 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 they begin to widen it. They enlarge it, and com¬ 
 mence the construction of the sides of the cup. They 
 build up the sides, leaving a hollow within. Every 
 thing proceeds according to a plan. You have first 
 the pedestal, then the stem, then the widened flange 
 of the goblet, then the hollow within, looking up to 
 heaven. The savage passes, and gazes on Neptune’s 
 cup in the Indian Ocean, and is struck with reverence. 
 He says in his secret thought: These creatures can¬ 
 not speak with each other, but they act on a plan as 
 if they were all in a conspiracy to produce just this 
 Neptune’s cup. Is the plan theirs, or does it belong 
 to a Power above them and that acts through them ? 
 Your poor savage there on the foaming coast of 
 the tropics looks up to the sky into which the cup 
 gazes, and finds the Author of the form of that 
 Neptune’s goblet in a Power not of but in the 
 creatures which build it. It is in them, but not of 
 them, for they have no intellect which can conceive 
 what the goblet is; but in isolation from each other 
 they so build their cells that they produce at last a 
 structure having a plan held in view, not only ap¬ 
 parently but in fact, from the very first. Even your 
 foremost French materialists find themselves dazed 
 when they stand where this savage does. One of 
 their opponents, writing lately, affirms that Neptune’s 
 cup is the noblest challenge that can be thrown 
 down before the school of materialistic evolution. 
 (Pouchet, The Universe , pp. 59, 61.) And yet we 
 have men so filled, not with the depth of the sea of 
 thought, but with its mere froth, — so filled with 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 133 
 
 wliat even the coral insects might rebuke, disloyalty 
 to instinct, that when they stand before Neptune’s 
 cup they see nothing to wonder at. By a combina¬ 
 tion of separate forces, the bioplasts, isolated from 
 each other, in the living tissues which they produce, 
 build the rose and the violet and all flowers; the 
 pomegranate, the cedar, the oak and the palm and all 
 trees; the eagle, the swan, the thrush, the nightin¬ 
 gale, the dove, and all birds; the lion, the leopard, 
 the giraffe, the elephant, and all animals; the human 
 eye, and ear and hand and brain, and all men. It is 
 absolutely necessary that the builders of Neptune’s 
 cup should be governed by one dominant idea. Does 
 chemistry explain the origin of their common thought? 
 It is also absolutely necessary that all the bioplasts 
 which weave a living organism should be governed by 
 one idea, and that idea differs with the differences of 
 individual living forms. Does chemistry explain the 
 origin of that co-ordinating thought? Neptune’s cup 
 alone strikes us dumb. But what shall we say of the 
 mystic structures built by the bioplasts? There is 
 the cup; it is a fact; and the eye is another Nep¬ 
 tune’s cup; and the hand another Neptune’s cup; 
 and all this universe is another Neptune’s cup; and 
 out of such cups, I, for one, drink the glad wine of 
 Theism! [Applause.] 
 
 2. The instincts of the bee, the beaver, the mi¬ 
 grating bird, are found, when scientifically investi¬ 
 gated, to raise no false expectations; they all have 
 their correlates; they are never created to be mocked. 
 
 3. From the existence of the profound instincts of 
 
184 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 conscience, we must infer that they too, when scien¬ 
 tifically interpreted, raise no false expectations. 
 
 4. But it is conceded that there are instincts in the 
 human mind by which man is led to work as if the 
 approval of a Higher Being were the aim of life. 
 
 5. This instinct implies the existence of its corre¬ 
 late, that is, of God as not merely a Somewhat, but 
 also a Some One. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that any scientific line 
 fathoms the depths of the nature of the Some One, or 
 of the Somewhat, revealed in the instincts of con¬ 
 science. But the quality of an infinity we may know 
 even when we cannot know its quantity. Knowledge 
 does not cease to be knowledge by becoming Omnis¬ 
 cience. Power does not cease to be power by becom¬ 
 ing Omnipotence. Space does not cease to be space by 
 becoming infinite in extent. Time is time, although 
 you stretch it out to the infinities and the eternities. 
 Intellect does not cease to be intellect by becoming 
 infinite. The seat of intellect, — that was Paley’s 
 definition of personality. We have no better defini¬ 
 tion than that. Wherever there is a thinker, we 
 know, therefore, that there exists a person. Ideas 
 flame from all quarters of the universe ; plans appear 
 in all the Neptune’s cups along the coasts of the 
 upper Indian oceans yonder, in the sounding surf of 
 the constellations where the starry dust of the nebula 
 floats as spray. We find there a plan, and here 
 a plan; and wherever a plan, we find an idea ; 
 wherever an idea, a thought; wherever a thought, a 
 thinker; and wherever a thinker, a person; and *»a if 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 135 
 
 you say all has been evolved, we say of necessity, that 
 all has been produced by an Evolver. [Applause.] 
 
 6. It is conceded everywhere, that conscience fore- 
 bodes punishment, and anticipates reward. 
 
 7. Those activities of conscience which forebode 
 punishment, and anticipate reward, imply the exist¬ 
 ence of God as personal. The sense of obligation 
 and the sense of dependence both imply this. The 
 Divine existence, the freedom of the will, and even 
 immortality, Kant called postulates of the practical 
 reason, that is, presuppositions implied in the activi¬ 
 ties of conscience. 
 
 There are organic and instinctive activities of con¬ 
 science, by which we forebode punishment, or antici¬ 
 pate reward. Who denies this ? Not Nero, when he 
 stabs himself, or causes his servant to hold the sword 
 on which he falls. Not Nero, when he hears groans 
 from the grave of his mother, whom he murdered 
 the other day, at Baiae. Tacitus says, as I recol¬ 
 lect at this moment, that Nero, after he murdered 
 Agrippina, heard sonitum tubce planctusque e tumulo , 
 the sound of a trumpet and groans from her grave. 
 He had had no Christian education. He had not been 
 brought up wrongly, and probably did not feel, as 
 Hume did, that it was necessary to explain his qualms 
 of conscience by a shock he received in his youth. 
 Nero had an education drawn out of the black sky 
 and the blood-soaked sods of old Rome; and yet he 
 anticipated the action of the Furies behind the veil. 
 Who will stand here and affirm that these moral fears 
 which in all ages have expressed themselves in what 
 
136 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 all religions have taught, as to the Furies and Nemesis 
 and the Avenging Fates, and as to what awaits us in 
 time to come beyond death, are not expressions of an 
 organic.and ineradicable instinct in man? If God 
 makes an instinct, there is always something to match 
 it. The instinct of a migrating bird finds a South 
 to match it; an ear, sound to match it; a fin, water to 
 match it. We walk directly out upon this universal 
 organic possession of man, and infer the existence 
 of its correlate. The poor bee throws out its an- 
 tennse, and touches things near it; and conscience 
 throws out her antennae, and touches things behind 
 the veil. Conscience makes cowards of us all, not on 
 account of any thing this side the veil, but of some¬ 
 thing on the other side. But when conscience makes 
 cowards of us all, is it merely of some arrangement of 
 the molecular atoms in the universe, merely of some 
 shiver of the ultimate particles of this inert stuff 
 that we call matter, merely of a Somewhat, or is it 
 of a Some One, that conscience makes us afraid? 
 [Applause.] I have yet to find a materialistic philos¬ 
 opher who does not admit that this foreboding organic 
 instinct is human. This is the way conscience is 
 made; and I undertake to say that it is not bun- 
 glingly and mendaciously made. 
 
 8. The good, the great, and the poetic minds of the 
 race, in all ages, have described their highest experi¬ 
 ences as involving a consciousness of God as personal. 
 
 Let your thoughts run through the vistas of his¬ 
 torical precedents. Call up Socrates with his pro¬ 
 tecting Genius, which always told him what not to 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 137 
 
 do. Call up every great poet that has addressed the 
 Muses; call up every orator that has invoked the aid 
 of the gods; remember Demosthenes there on the 
 Bema, looking abroad on the matchless landscape, 
 the temples, the tombs of the men who fell at Sala- 
 mis, and yet invoking, above them all, the immortal 
 gods. Remember that no public state assembly was 
 opened at Athens in her best days, unless preceded by 
 prayer. A dripping cloud would disperse an audi- 
 ence in the Pnyx, and this because men thought that 
 the portent indicated that the gods were opposed to 
 their assembling. Votive tablets to Jupiter clothed 
 the naked rocks at the sides of the Bema. Even 
 your Napoleon believes in a protecting genius. 
 Lowell pictures the first man in his naturalness, as 
 God-conquered, with his face to heaven upturned. 
 In our highest moments we instinctively speak of a 
 Some One and not merely of a Somewhat. Richter 
 says that when a child first witnesses a thunder¬ 
 storm, or when the greatest objects of nature, such as 
 the Alps, the Himalayas, or the ocean, come before 
 the mind for the first time, then is the moment in 
 which to speak of God; for the sublime everywhere 
 awakens the thought, not only of a Somewhat, but 
 of a Some One behind it. 
 
 Not a Somewhat merely, but a Some One, walks 
 on Niagara’s watery rim. The farther up you 
 ascend the Alps, if your thoughts are awake, the 
 more near you come to anticipated communion, 
 not only with Somewhat, but with Some One higher 
 than the Alps, or than the visible heavens that 
 
138 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 are to be rolled away. There are in the midnights 
 on the ocean, voices that the waves do not utter. I 
 have paced to and fro on the deck of a steamer, mid¬ 
 way between England and America, and remembered 
 that Greenland was on the north, and Africa and 
 the Tropic Islands on the south, in the resounding, 
 seething dark; and my home behind me, and the 
 mother-isle before me. Lying on the deck, and look¬ 
 ing into the topgallants, and watching them sway 
 to and fro among the constellations, and. listening to 
 the roll of the great deep, I have given myself, I 
 hope, some opportunity to study the voices of nature 
 there; but I assure you that my experience has been 
 like that of every other traveller, in the moments 
 when the sublimities of the sea and the stars have 
 spoken loudest. A Somewhat and a Some One great¬ 
 er than they spoke louder yet. The most audible 
 word uttered in that midnight, in the centre of the 
 Atlantic, was not concerning Africa, or America, or 
 England, or the tumbling icebergs of the North, but 
 of the Some One who holds all the Immensities and 
 the Eternities in his palm, as the small dust of the 
 balance. Was that natural? Was it instinctive ? Or 
 was this mood a forced attitude of spirit ? I should 
 have thought I was not human, if I had not had 
 a tendency to such a mood. I should have been a 
 stunted growth: I had almost said a lightning-smit¬ 
 ten trunk, without the foliage that belongs to the 
 upper faculties, without the sensitiveness that comes 
 from the culture of one’s whole nature : if I ha I not 
 felt behind the Somewhat of the material globe the 
 Some One giving it order. [Applause.] 
 
ORGANIC INSTINCTS IN CONSCIENCE. 139 
 
 9. In the deepest experiences of remorse there is a 
 sense in the soul of a disapproval not only by a Some¬ 
 what, but also by a Some One. 
 
 10. It is a fact of human nature, that total submis¬ 
 sion of the will to conscience brings into the soul 
 immediately a strange sense of the Divine approval 
 and presence as personal. 
 
 Pardon me if I ask you to use the scientific method, 
 gentlemen, in the verification of the most sublime 
 fact of human nature. You turn upon the sky your 
 unarranged telescope at random, and you see noth¬ 
 ing. Direct it properly, but fail to arrange its lenses, 
 and every thing visible through the tube is blurred. 
 But arrange the lenses, and bring the telescope ex¬ 
 actly upon the star, or upon the rising sun, and the 
 instant there is perfect accord between the line of 
 the axis of the tube and the line of the ray from the 
 star, or the orb of day, that instant, but never before, 
 the image of the star or sun starts up in the chamber 
 of the instrument. Just so I claim it to be the fact 
 of experience, — if you doubt, will you try the scien¬ 
 tific method of experiment on this subject? — that 
 whenever we submit utterly, affectionately, irreversi¬ 
 bly, to the best we know, that is, to the innermost 
 holiest of conscience, — at that instant, and never 
 before, there flashes through us, with quick, splendid, 
 interior, unexpected illumination, a Power not our 
 selves. The image of the star, or a representation 
 of the sun, is found within the chambers of the poor, 
 feeble, human instrument. You cannot have that 
 nner witness until you have that exterior and inte- 
 
140 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 rior conformity to conscience ; but whoever has these 
 will know by the inner light that God is with him in 
 a sense utterly unknown before. The axis of the 
 tube must be turned exactly upon the light before 
 you can have the image. An utterly holy choice 
 brings with it a Presence we dare not name. Turn 
 conscience in total self-surrender, gladly and exactly 
 upon the sun behind the Sun, and it is a fact of sci¬ 
 ence that there will inevitably spring into existence 
 a sun behind the lenses, hot enough to burn up your 
 greed and fraud, hot enough to burn up your doubts 
 and those winged creatures of night, scepticism and 
 unrest, which fly through the twilight and not through 
 the noon. [Applause.] 
 
 So much as to conscience is known to be fixed 
 natural law. There are undoubtedly in conscience 
 unexplored remainders, both unknown and unfath¬ 
 omable to science. ' “ Conscience and the conscious¬ 
 ness of God,” says Julius Muller, “ are one.” But if 
 behind the uncontroverted facts as to the natural 
 action of the highest of all human organic instincts, 
 there are mysteries, the scientific method, with unwav¬ 
 ering finger and lips mute with awe, points out in 
 what direction we are to seek their explanation. 
 
 “ Careless seems the Omnipresent; history’s pages but record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness, ’twixt old systems and the 
 Word'; 
 
 But the yet veiled rules the future, and behind the dim unknown 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.' 
 
 Adapted from, Lowell: The Present Crisis. 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
VL 
 
 THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL 
 
 THE EIGHTY-SIXTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAT 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 NOV. 5. 
 
Ganz leise spricht ein Gott in unser Brast, 
 
 Ganz leise, ganz vernehmlich zeigt uns an, 
 
 Was zu ergreifen ist und was zu fliehn. 
 
 Goethe: Torquato Tasso , ill. 
 
 id f/hf 6p&in> voftos iarl ftaotfunoc. — Plato: Minot, 
 
VI. 
 
 THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 PEELTJDE ON CUEEENT EVENTS. 
 
 Thomas Paine has recently been sold at auction 
 in Boston. [Laughter.] We are reminded anew 
 that in many senses infidelity does not pay. At the 
 dedication of the Paine Hall in Boston, in 1875, the 
 editor of an obscure infidel paper said in a public 
 address, reported in “ The Investigator,” for Feb. 3, 
 of that year, “ I will not conceal the fact that we 
 have had a long and difficult struggle. By the un¬ 
 expected and most generous bounty of our principal 
 benefactor, James Lick, Esq., of California, together 
 with the donations of sympathizing friends from all 
 parts of the country, we have been enabled to erect 
 this edifice, after about fifty years of incessant toil 
 and struggle.” Finding that statement in public 
 print, I cited it, and I have been abused by Horace. 
 Seaver for doing so, although the paragraph was 
 taken from his own paper. I suppose he thinks my 
 reading that in public was a violation of privacy, his 
 paper has so small a circulation. [Laughter.] But 
 I now hold in my hands another extract from the 
 
 143 
 
144 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 same paper, and there is much both in and between 
 its lines worth noticing. 
 
 A CARD TO THE DONORS AND FRIENDS OF PAINE MEMORIAL 
 
 BUILDING. 
 
 There was a meeting of the board of trustees of the Paine 
 Memorial Building, Oct. 1, 1877. 
 
 The trustees met pursuant to notice, Horace Seaver in the 
 chair, B. F. Underwood secretary. 
 
 After a statement of the financial condition of the building 
 by Mr. Mendum, and consideration of the same by the trustees, 
 it was voted : That, whereas the call upon the liberal public for 
 contributions to save the Paine Memorial Building, of date 
 June 18, 1877, has failed to elicit any thing like a sufficient 
 sum to meet even the immediate expenses of the building, and 
 seeing no prospect of success in the future, and unwilling to 
 solicit further donations for the building when there seems 
 to be no way to hold it with the contributions we are likely to 
 obtain, therefore we consider it advisable for the interest of all 
 parties concerned, that the building be sold by the mortgagee. 
 This was moved by B. F. Underwood, seconded by Thomas 
 Bobinson, and was unanimously passed by the board. 
 
 Moved by Mr. Bobinson, and seconded by Mr. Mendum, that 
 whereas we have recommended the sale of the Paine Memorial 
 building under foreclosure of mortgage, we decide to revoke 
 all calls for further contributions, and to notify the liberal pub¬ 
 lic that no scrip will be issued by the trustees as a means of 
 obtaining a loan. Passed unanimously. 
 
 Moved by B. F. Underwood, and seconded by Thomas Bob¬ 
 inson, that if any Liberal shall bid in the building, to be 
 retained for Liberal purposes, we will regard such action as 
 deserving the thanks of the Liberal public; and any effort to 
 obtain contributions or loans by issuing scrip on his personal 
 responsibility would, in our opinion, be worthy of encourage¬ 
 ment. Passed unanimously. 
 
 The trustees have given much time and attention to the 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAE. 
 
 145 
 
 interest of the Paine Memorial, and made every reasonable 
 effort to obtain money for the building. But the amount re¬ 
 ceived by contributions since we have had control of the build¬ 
 ing has been small, considering the money needed to pay taxes 
 and interest and meet the necessary expenses. We have been 
 able to hold the property up to the present time only because Mr. 
 Mendum has generously seen Jit to advance the money for the taxes 
 and interest , and thus has postponed the sale of the building. 
 
 The course which the trustees now advise — they can only advise, 
 owing to the heavy indebtedness which puts the building virtually in 
 the hands and subject to the control of the mortgagees — is simply a 
 necessity. Further efforts to hold the property are useless, and we 
 are unwilling to take contributions for the building when we see clearly 
 that even if we were able to meet the present demands , there would be 
 no prospect of preventing its sale at a later date. 
 
 Boston, Oct. 1, 1877. 
 
 Horace Seayer, 
 Josiah P. Mendum, 
 B. F. Underwood, 
 Osmore Jenkins, 
 Thomas Robinson, 
 
 
 ► Trustees. 
 
 (. Investigator.) 
 
 Such is the official statement of the last most pain¬ 
 ful news concerning this Paine Memorial Hall. [Loud 
 laughter.] I call attention to this ripple on the sur¬ 
 face of Boston affairs, not for the sake of this city, 
 where all the facts are well understood, but for the 
 sake of some critics of Boston at a distance who sup¬ 
 pose that free thought here has really no place in 
 which it can be wholly without fetters except yonder 
 *n the hall just sold by auction. We know better; 
 but it is presumed sometimes in New York, often in 
 Chicago, that the Paine Memorial Hall represented a 
 deep undercurrent here. Now, if it did, why was it 
 
146 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 not saved, as the only monument to the memory of— 
 well, what shall we say ? A crackling pamphleteei 
 who did much for liberty, and who would have been 
 remembered with a degree of honor if his door one 
 night, in a prison at Paris, had not been turned with 
 its back to the wall, and a chalk-mark that indicated 
 his destination for the guillotine been thus concealed. 
 
 Had Thomas Paine died in the middle of his 
 career, had he lost his life when death was appointed 
 for him in Paris, undoubtedly we might have remem¬ 
 bered him with something of the feeling with which 
 Washington and Jefferson and other leaders of our 
 revolutionary era at one time regarded him. But he 
 lived long enough to show the fruits of his own prin¬ 
 ciples, and to lose the larger part of his earlier friends. 
 Recent discussion has turned a flood of light upon 
 his last years. New York, in Paine’s day, had in it 
 men enough willing to conceal his faults — friends of 
 Paine ; friends not only of his political but of his 
 religious principles ; and who would not have put on 
 record contemporary evidence against him, had not 
 the facts been notorious. 
 
 We are not to spend more than ten minutes on 
 this noxious theme, and yet the biographical fact 
 should be remembered that Paine had, in his 
 last years, habits absolutely unreportable before a 
 mixed audience. He was personally filthy, and 
 was at times recommended to bathe as a means 
 of preparing him for company. On one occasion 
 he was hired to soak himself three hours in a hot 
 bath, and he insisted that he did not need the 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 147 
 
 ablutions, when everybody that had called lately 
 upon him had gone away shocked simply by the 
 man’s uncleanliness of person. He was a drunkard. 
 He was intemperate not only in the manner common 
 in that day, but roughly, deeply, bestially so. That 
 all this came from his infidel principles, I do not 
 assert, for some men have been drunkards who were 
 not infidels. But Paine, up to the last, continued to 
 be blasphemous toward Christianity. He was proud 
 of his infidelity. I do not suppose that he ever 
 ^eally recanted. It is true that in the last weeks of 
 his life he was constantly calling out, “ O Lord, 
 save me! ” “ O Christ, have pity on me! ” He 
 
 could not bear to be left alone. Even in the high 
 noon, he would shout so as to alarm the house, if 
 left without some one near him. There is evidence 
 that his infidelity sowed the seeds of his bad habits, 
 just as the infidelity of Aaron Burr sowed the seeds 
 of his habits. In Princeton, not long ago, I stood 
 in a celebrated cemetery in an autumnal cyclone, 
 and listened to the whistling of the wind over the 
 grave of Jonathan Edwards and that of Aaron 
 Burr. Who can say that the career of Burr was not 
 the natural outcome of his principles — a systematic 
 course of villany? and who can say that Edwards’s 
 career was not a natural outcome of his principles — 
 a systematic course of virtues? I can understand 
 that a man may be born with a dip of the needle that 
 leads him astray among the storms of passion. I 
 have sympathy for those who are wrecked because of 
 deep congenital difficulties. Aaron Burr had these, 
 
148 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and Thomas Paine had the same; but I presume 
 neither of them had more terrific passions than Jona¬ 
 than Edwards or Franklin, and yet in the one case we 
 have lives glorious, and in the other lives infamous. 
 
 Among the throng of unimpeachable witnesses of 
 Paine’s bestial condition in his last years, is the quiet, 
 candid Quaker, Stephen Grellet, whose life was pub¬ 
 lished in Philadelphia in 1860, and republished in 
 London in 1861. He lived neighbor to Paine; and 
 out of his journal, written in 1809, the very year 
 Paine died, let me read you one extract. I might 
 multiply citations by scores, but this is the most 
 strategic passage in all that has been said: — 
 
 I may not omit recording here the death of Thomas Paine. 
 A few days previous to my leaving home on my last religious 
 visit, on hearing that he was ill and in a very destitute condi¬ 
 tion, I went to see him, and found him in a wretched state ; 
 for he had been so neglected and forsaken by his pretended 
 friends that the common attentions to a sick man had been 
 withheld from him. The skin of his body was in some places 
 worn off, which greatly increased his sufferings. A nurse was 
 provided for him, and some needful comforts were supplied. 
 He was mostly in a state of stupor, but something that had 
 passed between us had made such an impression upon him 
 that, some time after my departure, he sent for me, and on 
 being told that I was gone from home he sent for another 
 Friend. This induced a valuable young Friend (Mary Ros- 
 ( coe), who had resided in my family, and continued at Green¬ 
 wich during a part of my absence, frequentty to go and take 
 him some little refreshment suitable for an invalid, furnished 
 by a neighbor. Once when she was there, three of his deisti- 
 cal associates came to the door, and, in a loud, unfeeling man* 
 Her, said, “ Tom Paine, it is said you are turning Christian 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 149 
 
 but we hope you will die as you have lived,” and then went 
 away. On which, turning to Mary Roscoe, he said, “ You see 
 what miserable comforters they are.” Once he asked her if 
 she had ever read any of his writings, and on being told she 
 had read but very little of them, he inquired what she thought 
 of them, adding, “From such a one as you, I expect a correct 
 answer.” She told him that when very young his “ Age of 
 Reason ” was put into her hands, but that the more she read 
 in it the more dark and distressed she felt, and she threw the 
 book into the fire. “ I wish all had done as you,” he replied ; 
 “ for if the Devil ever had any agency in any work, he has had 
 it in my writing that book.” When going to carry him some 
 refreshments she repeatedly heard him uttering the language, 
 “O Lord,” “Lord God,” or “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon 
 me! ” 
 
 God grant that mercy was shown him! Let us 
 show him mercy by remembering his patriotism, and 
 forgetting his anti-Christianity, of no consequence 
 now among scholars, and surely something that 
 ought not to be of any consequence among the ten 
 thousand half-educated young people and operatives 
 who buy the paper-covered “Age of Reason,” even 
 yet, as if it were the best book on the infidel side. 
 Not far from Boston a man with gray hairs rose in a 
 meeting where I was the other day, and said that he 
 had burned his Thomas Paine’s works and his Vol¬ 
 taire’s Philosophical Dictionary, and that he had ob¬ 
 tained more light from them in that way than in any 
 other. [Laughter.] 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 Charles Sumner — magnum atque venerabile nomen 
 — in a biography, which, if completed as well as it 
 
150 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 has been begun, will daze Trevelyan’s Macaulay, is 
 represented as standing one morning on the Alpine 
 verge of Italy. He was passing toward the highest 
 glaciers, and noticed at the edge of the way a col¬ 
 umn, on one side of which were the words Regno 
 Lombardi , and on the other Tyrolese Austria . He 
 passed the monument, and, suddenly recollecting 
 that he was leaving Italy, rushed backward, and, 
 with the enthusiasm which afterwards sent him into 
 the conflict with slavery, he removed his hat, waved 
 it toward Lago Maggiore and Lago di Como, and 
 toward Rome and Naples, Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, 
 and all the rest, and said, “ I salute thee, Italy,” and 
 so parted from the land of flowers. A German, 
 learned, pragmatic, far-seeing, noticing Sumner’s 
 action, walked back to the same barrier, removed his 
 hat, and turned his face toward the Fatherland, and 
 said, “ Et moi, je salue l’Allemagne.” “ For me, I 
 salute Germany.” (Pierce, Edward L., Memoir 
 and Letters of Charles Sumner , vol. ii. p. 125.) Thus 
 opposed in sentiment, these travellers went on. I 
 suppose the German learned to love Italy, if he al¬ 
 lowed himself to be bathed at all in Sumner’s enthu¬ 
 siasms. It is certain that Sumner learned to love 
 Germany; for beyond the eternal, deadly glaciers, 
 he found a land of cathedrals, stately universities, 
 great religious historic memories, and of patriotism 
 so intense that old Rome never conquered the Ger* 
 man forests, but was sent back daunted by Hermann. 
 Our fathers never yielded to the Roman Empire. In 
 Germany Sumner at last, when looking toward Italy 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 151 
 
 from the north side of the Alps, remembered that 
 one meridian joins Rome and Berlin, the North and 
 the South, and that there is no leaving that meridian 
 until we can out swim the bounds of the sky itself. 
 Italy, Germany, are parts of one world. They are frag¬ 
 ments of men, they are travellers of a narrow range, 
 they are provincial hearts and intellects, who cannot 
 embrace at once both the cathedrals of the Po and 
 the Tiber and those of the Rhine and Elbe. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] 
 
 Conscience is Italy: reason is Germany; and be¬ 
 tween them Herbert Spencer and Mansel and philos¬ 
 ophers of their school have in every age thrown up 
 Alps, obstructing the natural transition of travellers 
 from one to the other. Conscience teaches that God 
 is a person. The organic instincts of the soul all 
 point to a Being possessing personality, and on 
 whom we are dependent, and to whom we owe obli¬ 
 gation. But it is said that reason, strictly interro¬ 
 gated, will not permit us to assert that God is a per¬ 
 son; that an Infinite Person is a contradiction in 
 terms; that we cannot call God a person without 
 limiting him; and that to limit him is to deny his 
 infinity and absoluteness. 
 
 Many a man in the Italy of conscience has paused 
 at its boundary line on the glacial Alpine heights of 
 thought; and has saluted, as did Sumner, the South, 
 or the moral emotions and instincts; and then turned, 
 with a shiver taking hold of the bones themselves, 
 towards the avalanches of the North, or the icy syl¬ 
 logisms of reason and exact research. If we could 
 
152 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 only live on the Po always; if we could be effemi¬ 
 nate forever; if the South were the only quarter of 
 our nature fit to he trusted; if there were no majestic 
 Northern tribes in the soul that will have reason for 
 their King, — we possibly might be allowed in peace 
 to hold the sentimental and the effeminate faith that 
 God is a Person, and that our hearts and his heart 
 may come into contact, finite with infinite! But a 
 German stands here too, with our Sumner, and he 
 removes his hat, and his salutation is in the opposite 
 direction, and we must move on. It is asserted that 
 hundreds and thousands of armies have tried to cross 
 these Alps, and have perished in the attempt. Her¬ 
 bert Spencer has taken up his abode on the summits, 
 and insists that the avalanches are impassable. Man- 
 sel points us to army after army that has been 
 stranded in these snows. Harvard University yonder 
 has one brilliant Spencerian in it, who sits on the 
 Alpine glaciers, and denies that God can be known as 
 a Person, and pities any who seek to find Germany, 
 with its cathedrals and universities and majestic 
 memories, beyond the glaciers. (Fiske’s Cosmic Plii - 
 losophy , vol. ii. pp. 395, 405, 40T, 409.) His voice, 
 however, is but the echo of Spencer’s, although occa¬ 
 sionally more articulate than that of the master. It 
 is to Spencer that we must look chiefly, and to Mat¬ 
 thew Arnold and to Mansel and to Alexander Bain, 
 for our discouragements as we attempt to cross the 
 Alps of Nescience. I have a faith, and I have it in 
 the name of the general law of the survival of the 
 fittest; in the name of what has been the steady out 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 153 
 
 come of philosophy, age after age; in the name of 
 the sky of self-evident truths, which has in all its 
 parts but one curve, — that we can cross those Alps. 
 I have four tests of certainty: intuition, instinct, 
 experiment in the large range, and syllogism. By 
 instinct I feel authorized to say that God is a Person. 
 By experiment in the large range I feel authorized 
 to say so. That belief works well. By syllogism, 
 if John Stuart Mill is authority in logic, I am author¬ 
 ized to say that there is a Person, whether he is infi¬ 
 nite or not. A God exists who is a Person; and 
 whether we can call him literally infinite or absolute, 
 Mill does not determine ; but there is a Person behind 
 the thought exhibited in the universe. Syllogism, 
 experiment, and instinct, three parts of the curve, 
 are thus visible. But I never saw a curve yet that 
 did not run through its fourth quadrant according to 
 the law of its three other quadrants. If we, in dis¬ 
 cussing the organic instincts of conscience, and in 
 looking into the uncontroverted facts concerning the 
 moral faculty, find a sense of obligation and depend¬ 
 ence pointing to a personal God; if all these agnos¬ 
 tics, these Spencers, these followers of Arnold, these 
 doubters, some of them orthodox with Mansel, are 
 right in admitting, as they all do, that our organic 
 instincts force us to act as if we were responsible to 
 a Higher Person, — then assuredly we are right in 
 saying that the arc of instinct, in this circle of tests 
 of truth, points to God as a Person. Having a clear 
 view of this one quadrant only, I will dare to project 
 the maiestic curve; and into the avalanches, into the 
 
154 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 mists of the gnarled heights, into all that is Alpine 
 here, I will pass boldly on the line of that quadrant, 
 sure that beyond the summit I shall find a Germany, 
 one with Italy in the beloved South. [Applause.] 
 
 1. While it is admitted by the highest authorities 
 that conscience teaches that God is a Person, it is 
 affirmed by a few of these authorities that reason 
 teaches that he is not. 
 
 2. It is affirmed that to call God a Person is to 
 limit his infinity; and that an Infinite Personality is 
 a contradiction in terms. 
 
 3. In this state of the discussions concerning con¬ 
 science, if its organic instincts as to its obligations 
 to God as a Person are to be justified intellectually, 
 it becomes of the utmost importance to show that 
 reason as well as conscience teaches that God is a 
 Person. 
 
 4. For the purposes of such proof it is highly ad¬ 
 visable now to separate the whole topic of Theism 
 into three parts: namely, the proof that the Cause 
 of the universe possesses intelligence; the proof that 
 it possesses unity; and the proof that it possesses 
 infinity. 
 
 The question at the outset is not whether God is 
 infinite or finite, but whether he is intelligent or not. 
 It is my object to establish the proposition that con¬ 
 science reveals not merely a Somewhat, but a Some 
 One ; and, having proved from the point of view of 
 instinct that it does, I must now justify the proof by 
 showing that reason can make no objections to that 
 conclusion. 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 155 
 
 While we are considering intelligence as cause, I 
 leave out of view entirely the inquiry as to its infin¬ 
 ity. The question is not even raised, in the opening 
 of an argument such as I am presenting to you, 
 whether God is infinite or not. Can we prove that 
 he is Some One ? That is the initial inquiry. Can 
 we demonstrate that there exists in the universe 
 an intelligence not ourselves ? After demonstrating 
 that the Cause which stands before the present uni¬ 
 verse has intelligence, we must ask whether it has 
 unity. After having proved the intelligence and the 
 unity, we must treat the infinity as a wholly different 
 thing. Separate proofs are adapted to these several 
 traits. Do not overload the definition of God when 
 you begin your argument from reason for his exist¬ 
 ence as a Person. 
 
 5. The universe exhibits thought. There cannot 
 be thought without a thinker. The cause of the uni¬ 
 verse, therefore, is a thinker. And a thinker is a 
 person. 
 
 6. But the universe exhibits, so far as human ob¬ 
 servation extends, perfect unity of thought. Gravi¬ 
 tation is the same everywhere, and so are light, heat, 
 and the other natural forces. 
 
 7. The universe, therefore, exhibits one thought 
 — and but one. 
 
 8. Its cause, therefore, is One Thinker, and but 
 One; that is, One Personal Intelligence, and but 
 One. 
 
 The philosophy dominant at Yale College and at 
 Harvard, at Berlin and Halle, at Edinburgh and Ox* 
 
156 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 ford and Cambridge, is well represented by these in¬ 
 cisive sentences from the ablest book on metaphysics 
 Yale College has given to the world. “ The uni¬ 
 verse,” says President Porter, “ is a thought , as well 
 as a thing . As fraught with design it reveals thought 
 % as well as force. The thought includes the origina¬ 
 tion of the forces and their laws, as well as the com¬ 
 bination and use of them. These thoughts must 
 include the whole universe: it follows, then, that 
 the universe is controlled by a single thought, or the 
 thought of an individual thinker.” (The Human 
 Intellect , p. 661.) 
 
 Let us pause, and cast ourselves abroad on the wing 
 of imagination, through at least some small portion 
 of the range of truth disclosed by the facts that 
 thought implies a thinker, and that the thought of 
 the universe is one. Take in your hand the mystic 
 instrument called the spectroscope, and bring down 
 light from the two planets which last evening I saw 
 near each other in the infinite azure. Here arrives a 
 far-travelled ray from Mars; here one from Saturn ; 
 here one from Sirius; here one from the North Star. 
 It left that orb fifty years ago, and has not paused, 
 and is here at last. Certain metals, when burned, 
 always produce definite dark lines in the colored 
 lights of the spectroscope. We know that zinc pro¬ 
 duces a line in a particular place, lead in another 
 place, iron in another place; and we bring down this 
 light of Mars, of Saturn, and of the North Star, and 
 here are the very lines of zinc and iron and lead. 
 Matter yonder, fifty years distant for light, we thus 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 157 
 
 know to be much what it is here. Meteors have fall¬ 
 en on this earth; the dust of meteors has been ab¬ 
 sorbed into plants; and, for aught I know, there are 
 in your arm particles that came from Sirius. The 
 universe has light in it; and the laws of light are the 
 same here and at the farthest point visible to the tel¬ 
 escope. Light moves in straight lines here and in 
 straight lines there. Gravitation is the same thing 
 here and yonder. We cannot imagine a spot in the 
 universe where the whole is less than a part, or where 
 two straight lines can enclose a space, or where any 
 self-evident truth is false. Thus we feel that the 
 universe exhibits not only a plan, but a uniform 
 plan ; it exhibits not only thought, but harmonious 
 thought. It is a thing, but it is a thought; and it is 
 not merely a thought, without further definition: it 
 is one thought, interiorly self-consistent, and not a 
 fagot of self-contradictions. This immeasurable but 
 incontrovertible unity is before our eyes. It demon¬ 
 strates unity in the thought of the universe, and 
 therefore unity in the Thinker. The universe ex¬ 
 hibits (me thought, ard but one. Its cause, there¬ 
 fore, is one Thinker, and but one; one Personal Intel¬ 
 ligence, and but one. 
 
 Adhere, without a particle of wavering, to the 
 proposition that there cannot be a thought without a 
 thinker. That is Descartes’ fundamental axiom, the 
 corner-stone on which he placed himself face to face 
 with all scepticism and unrest. This is the one 
 point of philosophy where certainty is firmest up to 
 this hour. There cannot be thought without a per* 
 
158 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 son. I think: therefore I am a person. There is 
 thought not our own in the universe: therefore there 
 is a Person in the universe not ourselves! The 
 thought is one: the Thinker therefore is One! 
 Sometimes, when I stand under the dome of that 
 truth, I am moved as the constellations never stir 
 me. The old songs once sung in the Temple yonder 
 on a hill that has influenced the ages more than 
 Athens or Rome, come into my thoughts; but even 
 their melodies do not always express fully the en¬ 
 thusiasm which bursts up face to face with the scien¬ 
 tific method in our day. We must expand David’s 
 outlook upon the universe. No doubt he beheld the 
 moral law more vividly than we do; no doubt he 
 had interior insight such as belongs to that strange 
 race of which he was a representative. The Greek 
 knew art better than we do; compared with him we 
 are uncouth. In contrast with the Hebrew in his 
 best estate, we are morally imperceptive. But these 
 grandeurs of law which God seems to have revealed 
 to us, the Aryan race : these grandeurs of co-ordina¬ 
 tion which make us, in our fragmentariness of en¬ 
 dowment, sometimes almost content with a mere 
 Cosmic Deity, without much thought of a person,— 
 we must unite them all, the modern with the Greek 
 and Hebrew organ-pipes! But the music proceed 
 ing from them all together, falling, expanding, filling 
 the dome of the universe — that is but the sound of 
 a shepherd’s pipe compared with the melodies that 
 will rise in all full-orbed souls whenever the ages 
 have been taught to look aloft, with adequate intent* 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 159 
 
 ness, into the azure represented by the simple cer¬ 
 tainty that there cannot be in the universe thought 
 not our own, without a Person not ourselves; and 
 that, as the thought is one, so that Personality is One. 
 [Applause.] Let us be glad! Let us lift up our 
 hearts! Let us say to the eternal gates of science, 
 “Lift up your heads, that the King of Glory may 
 come in.” [Applause.] The day is coming when 
 another age will say this to the gates that have foun¬ 
 dations. The day is coming when our transitory 
 stage of thought — simply a sophomoric year in 
 human investigation, and in which we can ask more 
 questions than we can answer — will be looked 
 back upon with disdain. The day is coming when 
 the iron lips of science will utter the words of the 
 Psalmist and the words of all natural law: “Lift 
 up the Gates on which the Pleiades are but orna¬ 
 ments ! Lift up the Gates on which all physical 
 immensities and infinities and eternities are but so 
 much filagree! Lift up these Gates, and the King, 
 Immortal, Eternal, Invisible, not ourselves, and who 
 loves Truth, Beauty, and Righteousness, will come 
 in ! ” [Applause.] 
 
 9. The Infinite and the Absolute are words which 
 mean nothing unless we understand by them that 
 which is absolute or infinite in some given attribute. 
 
 Stuart Mill was no partisan on the side of Theism, 
 but his dissatisfaction with Mansel’s and Spencer’s use 
 of the words Infinite and Absolute is well known. 
 Space we call infinite, and we mean not vaguely that 
 it is the Infinite or the Absolute, but that it is infinite 
 
160 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 in one particular quality, namely, extension. If you 
 speak of space as the Infinite or the Absolute, with* 
 out stating in what quality the object meant is infinite 
 or absolute, you at once confuse men, because you 
 are not exprtssing a definite idea. Herbert Spence., 
 Mansel, and their followers, are constantly telling us 
 we must think thus and so concerning the Infinite 
 and the Absolute. Now substitute for these terms 
 the Infinite Being, the Absolute Being, and very often 
 their expressions will not make sense, or make noth¬ 
 ing short of blasphemy. The Absolute, it is said, 
 must contain every thing. “ There is a contradic¬ 
 tion,” says Mansel, “in conceiving the Infinite and 
 Absolute as personal; and there is a contradiction in 
 conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot, without con¬ 
 tradiction, be represented as active; nor, without 
 equal contradiction, be represented as inactive.” 
 (.Limits of Religious Thought , Lect. II.) “ To de¬ 
 fine God,” said Spinoza, “is to deny him.” If we 
 limit God by saying that he cannot do evil, we are 
 putting a bound upon his nature, and he is no longer 
 infinite. Well, all this dense and often deadly vapor 
 arose from a false definition of the Absolute and the 
 Infinite. Say an infinite being, one who is infinite in 
 goodness, cannot be evil, and then say that such an 
 affirmation implies limitation of God ! Say that two 
 straight lines cannot enclose a space, and then affirm 
 that such an affirmation involves limitation of the 
 qualities of the object that is infinite, and you con¬ 
 fuse all thought, simply because you are yourself con 
 fused. The Absolute, the Infinite, are words that 
 
 i 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 161 
 
 have no real significance unless taken in connection 
 with some quality. You must come down to the 
 concrete always to get the meaning of these abstract 
 terms; and the men who sit among the glaciers of 
 the Alps, and tell us the Alps cannot be passed, are 
 sitting, not on the concrete rock, not even on the 
 snow, but on the fog. [Applause.] We speak of 
 time as infinite, but we mean only that it is infinite 
 in one respect, duration. In a similar sense, the one 
 Thinker who stands behind the one thought of the 
 Universe has been termed infinite in the sense of pos¬ 
 sessing infinite power, and absolute in the sense of ab¬ 
 solute, finished, completed goodness and knowledge. 
 
 10. It is certain that infinite space is space; infi¬ 
 nite time is time; infinite power is power; infinite 
 knowledge is knowledge ; and infinite goodness is 
 goodness. 
 
 11. What is affirmed, therefore, in calling the 
 Divine Attributes of power, knowledge, and good¬ 
 ness infinite, is intelligible, and involves no self-con¬ 
 tradiction. 
 
 12. Except the element of infinity, any given qual¬ 
 ity is the same in its infinite as in its finite develop¬ 
 ment. We cannot adequately conceive the quantity, 
 but we may the quality, of an infinity. 
 
 Space is just the same in its infinite as in its finite 
 development. Power is just the same in its infinite 
 as in its finite development. Indeed, we never hear 
 objection to likening God to man brought against this 
 attribute of power. We are told that we are con¬ 
 stantly falling into anthropomorphism, but that the 
 
162 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 tendency of science is to deanthropomorphization. 
 This is getting to be a very popular word, my friends, 
 and so we must accustom ourselves to it. Anthropo- 
 morphization, — that means simply an excessive ten¬ 
 dency to liken God to man, and deanthropomorphiza- 
 tion means the opposite. Spencer and his school often 
 forget that there is anthropomorphism in their own 
 characterization of the Cause of the Universe as a 
 Power. Goethe said we never know how anthro¬ 
 pomorphic we are; and I think Matthew Arnold him¬ 
 self does not know how anthropomorphic he is. He 
 is constantly employing phraseology that implies 
 personality in God. “ The Eternal not ourselves 
 loves; ” “ the Eternal not ourselves hates.” “ The 
 Eternal not ourselves,” he personifies constantly. Of 
 course he explains that by personification he means 
 only poetry. But this poetry is organic, instinctive, 
 constitutional. Matthew Arnold’s famous proposi¬ 
 tion, that the Jews did not believe in a God except 
 poetically, that they always knew that there was no 
 Person behind the Eternal Power, not themselves, 
 which they thought made for righteousness, is one of 
 the absurdest of all the eccentricities of the school of 
 Nescience. It really has made no impression on 
 scholarly thought, much as we revere Matthew Ar¬ 
 nold and his father. If the father were alive, I think 
 some logical chastisement, at least, would be applied 
 to the son. For his father had a stalwart grasp upon 
 philosophy as well as the historic sense. Dr. Dale 
 told me the other day that Matthew Arnold once 
 said to him in a parlor in London, “ I stand about 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 163 
 
 where my father did; ” and he considered that re* 
 mark of Arnold’s an indication of a lack of careful 
 habits of discrimination. Dr. Dale replied, “ Mat¬ 
 thew Arnold, your father believed in the personality 
 of God, and was inspired by that truth to heroic life; 
 and he believed that God has manifested himself in 
 human history; and these things make a difference 
 between your own views and his.” And Matthew 
 Arnold’s only reply was given in a dazed, uncertain 
 way, “ Well, perhaps they do.” When Arnold’s best 
 expressions agree with the Biblical language, they 
 do so because his instinct moves him toward the atti¬ 
 tude which the Bible words express; and that attitude 
 is adoration before God as a Person. That the Jew 
 did not believe God to be a Person, is a proposition 
 just as rational as that the Greek did not believe art 
 to be a worthy field for human effort. We might as 
 well say that the Roman Empire never existed as to 
 say that the Jew did not believe in a personal God. 
 
 13. What is inconsistent with goodness will be 
 inconsistent with infinite goodness. 
 
 Just here I must pause to show you the stalwart 
 manliness of John Stuart Mill. Mansel, believing 
 in Sir William Hamilton’s phrases about the Infi¬ 
 nite and the Absolute, a few passages which the 
 master never expanded into a system, undertook to 
 assert that God may be so different from man that 
 if there is objectionable truth in revelation we must 
 not apply to it very sternly the human standards of 
 morality. I revere Mansel; but his book on the 
 Limits of Religious Thought seems to me, as it 
 
164 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 seemed to John Stuart Mill, one of the most mis¬ 
 chievous of modern productions. In the name of 
 the limitation of the human faculties and the relativ¬ 
 ity of all knowledge, — a truth which I do not deny, 
 in the sense in which Sir William Hamilton admitted 
 it, — Mansel affirmed that we never can know intel¬ 
 lectually that God is a Person; his goodness may not 
 have laws represented by the self-evident truths of 
 conscience; and, therefore, if difficulties arise in 
 revelation, we must regard the universe as a scheme 
 imperfectly comprehended, and, in case of the Bible, 
 treat it leniently in detail after its general authority is 
 once proved. Stuart Mill, remembering that infinite 
 goodness is goodness, and that what is inconsistent 
 with goodness must be inconsistent with infinite good¬ 
 ness, sat down one day, and wrote his opinion of 
 Mansel’s book : u To say that God’s goodness may be 
 different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but 
 saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God 
 may possibly not be good ? To assert in words what 
 we do not think in meaning, is as suitable a definition 
 as can be given of a moral falsehood. If, instead of 
 the glad tidings that there exists a Being in whom all 
 the excellences which the highest human mind can 
 conceive exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am 
 informed that the world is ruled by a Being whose 
 attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot 
 learn, nor what are the principles of his government, 
 except that the highest human morality which we are 
 capable of conceiving does not sanction them, con¬ 
 vince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 165 
 
 when I am told that I must believe this, and at the 
 same lime call this Being by the names which express 
 and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain 
 terms that I will not. Whatever power such a Being 
 may have over me, there is one thing which he shall 
 not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I 
 will call no being good who is not what I mean when 
 I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and, if 
 such a being can sentence me to hell for not so call¬ 
 ing him, to hell I will go.” (Mill, John Stuart, 
 Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 
 vol. i. chap, vii.) 
 
 There was an earthquake rent, into which this 
 whole philosophy of Nescience will ultimately be 
 cast in the name of logic, and with the acclamations 
 of all thinking men. 
 
 14. The attributes of knowledge, power, and good¬ 
 ness, each of them in an infinite degree, can be intel¬ 
 ligibly and without self-contradiction attributed to 
 one Thinker, and to but One; and that One He 
 whose thought the origination and preservation of 
 the universe exhibit. 
 
 15. Immense distinctions exist between the Abso¬ 
 lute defined as the unrelated, or that which exists 
 out of all relations, and the Absolute defined as the 
 independent, or that which exists out of one set of 
 relations, that is, out of all relations of dependence. 
 
 16. It is in the latter sense only that scientific 
 Theism asserts that the One Person whose existence 
 is proved by the one thought of the universe, is 
 absolute. 
 
166 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 17. Great distinctions exist between the Absolute 
 defined as that which is capable of existing out of 
 relation to any thing else, and defined as that which 
 is incapable of existing in relation to any thing else. 
 
 18. It is in the former sense that scientific Theism 
 calls God absolute. 
 
 19. It is in the latter that Herbert Spencer, Man- 
 sel, and others who deny that we can prove intellectu¬ 
 ally that God is a Person, call God absolute. 
 
 20. This false definition overlooks the distinction 
 between infinite and all, and leads Mansel to Hegel’s 
 conclusion that God’s nature embraces every tiling, 
 evil included. 
 
 21. The definition which Mansel and Spencer hold 
 is repudiated by scientific Theism. (See Mabti- 
 NEATJ, Philosophical Essays , Science, Nescience, and 
 Faith; President Pobteb, The Human Intellect , last 
 chapter; President McCosh, The Divine Government; 
 Hodge, Systematic Theology , vol. i. pp. 381-432; 
 Nitsch, Rothe, Teendeleubueg, Doeneb, Uleici, 
 and Julius Mulleb, passim; and, especially, Mill’s 
 Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, vol. i. chaps, 
 i. to vii.) 
 
 22. With that repudiation all the alleged difficul¬ 
 ties that arise from asserting the personality of God 
 vanish. 
 
 23. Herbert Spencer and his school admit that the 
 Eternal Power, not ourselves, which makes for right¬ 
 eousness in the universe, is omnipresent, self-exist¬ 
 ent, omnipotent, and in this sense infinite and 
 absolute. 
 
THE FIRST CAUSE AS PERSONAL. 
 
 167 
 
 In a recent volume of most searching applications 
 of the scientific method to philosophical thought, 
 Thomas Hill writes: “ Spencer says that- our belief 
 in an Omnipresent Eternal Cause of the Universe has 
 a higher warrant than any other belief, that is, that 
 the existence of such a Cause is the most certain of 
 all certainties; but asserts that we can assign to it 
 no attributes whatever, and that it is absolutely 
 unknown and unknowable. Yet, in his very state¬ 
 ment of its existence, he assigns to the Ultimate 
 Cause four attributes: Being, Causal Energy, Omni¬ 
 presence, and Eternity. And afterwards he implicitly 
 assigns to it two other attributes—repeatedly ex¬ 
 pressing his faith that the Cosmos is obedient to law, 
 and that this law is of beneficent result, which is an 
 implicit ascription of wisdom and love to the ulti¬ 
 mate cause. All thinkers concede that human rea¬ 
 son is competent to discover the existence of an 
 Ultimate Cause, to form the inductions of its Being, 
 its Causal Energy or Power, its Omnipresence and 
 Eternity.” (Hill, Thomas, ex-President of Har¬ 
 vard University: The Natural Sources of Theology , 
 pp. 33, 42.) 
 
 24. The intelligence, the unity, and in a correct 
 sense the infinity, of the Cause of the Universe, are 
 therefore proved in entire harmony with the scien¬ 
 tific method on the one hand, and Christian Theism 
 on the other. 
 
 Our best conclusion is adoring silence before the 
 slowly lifting Gates through which the Eternal, who 
 holds infinities and eternities in his hands as the 
 
168 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 small dust in the balance, is passing into science, into 
 politics, into the perishing and dangerous populations 
 of the world, into the Norse American as well as into 
 the Puritan American, into literature, into woman’s 
 heart, into conscience, into the future, and so leading 
 us into that world into which all men haste. He is 
 there, he is here ; and our best speech before him, in 
 the name of science, is silence and action. [Ap- 
 plause.J 
 
m 
 
 IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 NOV. 12. 
 
Every man brings such a degree of this light into the world with 
 him, that, though it cannot bring him to heaven, yet it will carry 
 him so far that if he follows it faithfully he shall meet with another 
 light which shall carry him quite through. — South. 
 
 Alle Form sie kommt von oben. — Goethe 
 
VXL 
 
 IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 PEELUDE ON CUEEENT EVENTS. 
 
 When the Northern Pacific Railway is finished, 
 America will be one thousand miles nearer China 
 than now. Ships from the Oregon coast pass to 
 Saghalien on a comparatively small circle of the 
 globe, while, from San Francisco by the way of the 
 Sandwich Islands, they sail to Japan over the track 
 of a great circle. It is practically settled that a 
 bridge is to be built by commerce across the North¬ 
 ern Pacific—between what two abutments? 
 
 On the one hand we have a largely unoccupied 
 country, giving exceptional honor to free labor; 
 offering to the workingman meat every day for 
 dinner; and providing for him a competence if he is 
 industrious and economical. On the other, we have 
 a land supposed to contain from 450,000,000 to 550,- 
 000,000 people, suffocated, and many of them starved. 
 It is only a question of time, whether a bridge built 
 between two such shores will be used. It is only a 
 question of time, whether Chinese immigration is to 
 
 become an important organizing force on the Pacific 
 
 m 
 
172 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 coast, and redemptive for China by reflex influences 
 from America. 
 
 It seems to be forgotten in the United States., that 
 to-day the Chinese are the great colonizers of the 
 East. The natives of Cambodia, Sumatra, Java, the 
 Philippine Islands, Timor, and Borneo, are fading 
 away before civilization. Europeans cannot cope 
 with the insalubrity of the torrid East-Indian cli¬ 
 mates. The Chinese alone have proved themselves 
 able to maintain vigorous physical life in these 
 regions. They are entering them by thousands, and 
 in some cases tens of thousands, every year, and that 
 in an ever increasing ratio. They are rapidly colo¬ 
 nizing Mantchuria, Mongolia, and Thibet. A stream 
 of emigration has of late set toward Australia, New 
 Zealand, and the Pacific coast of America. (Para- 
 phlet published by English residents of Shanghai , 
 May 16, 1877.) 
 
 Ah Sin comes to California now hungry. He has 
 a little meat to eat every day. Letters in strange 
 characters go back to the rivers of China, containing 
 the wonderful information, which so surprised Charles 
 Dickens when he first landed in Boston, that work¬ 
 ingmen in the United States can have meat to eat 
 three hundred and* sixty-five days of the year at 
 dinner. Wandering up and down in the Chinese 
 quarter of San Francisco, undoubtedly we meet the 
 vices of heathendom ; and of course there is nothing 
 equal to those in Vienna or Paris. 
 
 “ For ways that are dark, 
 
 And tricks that are vain, 
 
 The heathen Chinee is peculiar.” 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 173 
 
 But the Californian is not, the Viennese is not, the 
 Parisian is not! Opium fumes are rising here from 
 the corner of the street; they proceed out of a cellar. 
 But absinthe is used among the soft ladies of Paris, I 
 have heard, and sometimes is not unknown in certain 
 spoiled luxurious circles of the United States. Of 
 course the Chinaman is to blame, and we are not. 
 Nevertheless his old heaven of mythology is a rather 
 better one than ours was. Wendell Phillips says 
 that if you wish to know the real traits of nations 
 you must go back to the time when, in paganism, 
 they constructed mythology, and notice what their 
 heavens were. These Chinamen had a Confucius to 
 teach them; and, although that leader of religious 
 thought did not make any assertions about immor¬ 
 tality, he did teach reverence for parents and schol¬ 
 arship. The peace and permanence of the Chinese 
 Empire seem to have depended very largely upon 
 that one trait, cultivated by pagan religion. Carlyle 
 says that most European governments, with their 
 sudden revolutions, might take many a shrewd hint 
 from China. Civil-service reform can look to the 
 3 egion of the great rivers, falling from the Himalayas 
 into the Yellow Sea, for examples of competitive 
 examinations for public office, conducted with far 
 more rigor and general justice than are any other 
 political contests on the globe. We had a mythol¬ 
 ogy in which our fathers were represented as in the 
 next life drinking mead out of the skulls of their 
 enemies; as becoming intoxicated in Valhalla, in 
 order the more vigorously to hew each other to 
 
174 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 pieces; and as rising after the bloodless conflicts to 
 become whole again, and again to become intoxicated 
 and enter into the pastime of hewing limb from 
 limb. We have barbaric blood in our veins yet, 
 and our temptations from Valhalla mead are not 
 ended. Enough has been said of Chinese opium- 
 eaters, but not enough of the greed of English mer¬ 
 chants who forced the Chinese trade into the popular 
 sale of that drug. 
 
 We wander up and down the Chinese quarter of 
 San Francisco, and hear strange language from 
 roughs. “I would as soon kill a Chinaman as a 
 dog,” says one to another. That threat proceeds, 
 perhaps, from some son of an Emerald Isle, emigrants 
 from which New York City considers her chief bless- 
 mg! 
 
 I am aware that when the elephant plucks down 
 foliage from the oak, it is the foliage that becomes 
 elephant, and not the elephant that becomes foliage. 
 Our foreign emigration will be treated in that way, 
 even if it is Irish; but the elephant has trouble, 
 especially in the ostrich stomach of New York. If 
 you insist that he shall endure the assimilation of 
 tons of Irish foliage, in New York, why are you so 
 ready to insist that he shall make no attempts to 
 assimilate a few sprays from the Chinese oak ? 
 Many are eager to pass a law prohibiting all Chinese 
 emigrants from acquiring the right of voting here. 
 It is clear from experience that the Chinaman will 
 not be seen as often drunk as the Irishman; it is 
 clear that he will not be seen drunk as often as the 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 175 
 
 low-paid American laborer. Ah Sin has come into 
 collision with low-paid labor on the Pacific coast, 
 principally because he does not get drunk, lives on 
 rice, and sleeps on a board. His vices have come 
 with him, for a poor part of the population around 
 corrupt Canton has crossed over under the spur of 
 the greed of the great Chinese emigration companies. 
 Undoubtedly the women found in the Chinese 
 quarters are unreportably vicious. They are slaves; 
 they are bought and sold to a bondage altogether 
 more ignominious and awful than the black race 
 ever endured on this continent. You sat still while 
 the village of Antioch was burned to the ground on 
 the 1st of May, 1876, and when the Chinese inhab¬ 
 itants there were warned that they could remain in 
 eight of the ashes of their huts only under the 
 penalty of death. Anti-coolie clubs all over Cali¬ 
 fornia sent messages to officials at Washington, that 
 if measures were not taken to repress Chinese immi¬ 
 gration, a similar fate was in store for Chinatown. 
 How many Chinamen are there? Sixty thousand. 
 How many Chinamen are there in California? Two 
 hundred thousand. 
 
 What have they done ? They hung over the 
 beetling crags of the Sierra Nevadas, and tunnelled 
 them, when the Southern Pacific Railroad was built; 
 and they will do the same work in the gorges of tho 
 Rocky Mountains, when the Northern Pacific is 
 built. They were sent down, mired to the waist in 
 mud, to build levees, when San Francisco was threat¬ 
 ened with an inundation, aiid when no white man 
 
176 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 would take the position. They have performed most 
 of the manual labor in the construction of the rail¬ 
 ways which have raised the price of the Californian 
 wheat-lands froln one dollar to twenty-five dollars 
 an acre. They have monopolized by fair competi¬ 
 tion the linen-washing of San Francisco. Ah Sin 
 sometimes smokes opium, no doubt, and gambles; 
 but he is mainly concerned in getting a little meat 
 for dinner, and enough money to enable him to go 
 back and bury his bones in China. (See an elo¬ 
 quent paper on the Chinese in California, read at 
 Syracuse, N.Y., by William Edwards Park, Oct. 
 23.) 
 
 How can we reach him? By baiting the Gospel 
 hook with the English alphabet. [Applause.] We 
 want a few schools opened in San Francisco. We 
 want a few men to put Ah Sin in a home when his 
 hut is burned up. Here is a man ready to do that, 
 and he is employed by the American Missionary So¬ 
 ciety. Is he doing any good? When Antioch was 
 burned, he received some of the refugees into his 
 own house. When Ah Sin’s hut was mobbed and 
 razed to the ground the other night in the Chinese 
 quarters, he found him some chambers the next day, 
 and helped him through the pinch. The flaming ar¬ 
 ticles in the city press, against the Chinese, this man 
 sometimes answers, and does it eloquently. He is 
 opening schools wherever he can, in the Chinese 
 quarters, and it is found that his position soothes the 
 waters. He is respected by all the better class in 
 San Francisco ; and little by little the Chinese come 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 177 
 
 to believe in him. He ought to open twenty schools. 
 Why does he not ? He has twenty Ah Sins whom 
 he might succor. He is a man of enterprise, and 
 looks sagacious. Why are his enterprises languish¬ 
 ing? His pockets are empty because you have put 
 little into them. 
 
 The mayor, and the aldermen, and the politicians, 
 — all honorable men, no doubt, as Cassius was an 
 honorable man, — take note of Ah Sin, and make a 
 law that any laundry-house which delivers linen by 
 a two-horse wagon shall pay one dollar a month tax, 
 and that every laundry-house that delivers by basket 
 and by hand shall pay ten dollars, — laws like those 
 of Philip II. of Spain, against the Moors. When 
 all these things happen, we need to be reminded of 
 what Du Bois Reymond has told us, that nervous 
 influence travels only seventy feet a second in the 
 body. If the floating island we call a whale is har¬ 
 pooned in the flukes, it is a full second, if the fish is 
 thirty-five feet long, before the message can go to the 
 brain, and a return message be sent to the flukes, 
 commanding them to drop into the sea. So wide is 
 America, so broadly do we roll in strength and size 
 in the ocean of time, that one of our greatest dan¬ 
 gers is that distance may make us apathetic to our 
 own wounds. We may be harpooned on the Pacific 
 coast, and never know the fact in Boston. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] The breadth of our land gives most of us 
 the impression that the Chinese question is a bagatelle. 
 Before the harpooned flukes can be dropped into the 
 sea, Ah Sin is mobbed, and his village burned. 
 
178 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Of course the Chinese do not settle here, and are, 
 in some sense, an excrescence on our population. 
 The truth is, however, that irreversible laws of trade 
 are likely to bring a large influx from the suffocated 
 Chinese Empire to our Pacific Coast. One-quarter 
 of the population of the globe lives in that empire. 
 They are dull men, you say. Well, they invented 
 printing, and gunpowder, and the mariners’ compass; 
 they were the first to make these innovations, so 
 scholars say; and silk, and porcelain, and a number 
 of other very fine articles, they learned to use before 
 we did. There is behind them a training to order¬ 
 liness. If they are treated as well as we treat other 
 foreigners under similar circumstances, if our doors 
 on the Pacific Coast are not all to be barbaric ones, 
 if the Chinaman, while he is peacable and industri¬ 
 ous, is to be allowed the fair rights of an American 
 citizen, there will be more emigration. Even if he is 
 abused, there will be emigration. I do not know 
 when, but before another centennial, or before the 
 third, there will be an important Chinese element, on 
 the Pacific coast. From this certainty, arises the cry 
 of the roughs and hoodlums of whizzing San Fran¬ 
 cisco, and their call to the people of the East to 
 crowd out the Chinaman, and to make him submit 
 to taxation without representation. He now pays 
 five million dollars annually to government, and cor¬ 
 porations, and land-owners, and has no right to vote. 
 When all kinds of indignities are put upon him, and 
 public sentiment, represented by the religious bodies, 
 is decidedly on his side, it is time for the whale — 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 179 
 
 very like a whale — to give the order for the drop¬ 
 ping of the flukes. This question between Irishmen 
 and Chinamen is important, simply as one phase of 
 the labor problem. Surely Ah Sin, while he is indus¬ 
 trious, and spends less for drinks than Hans or 
 Patrick, has an equal right to the protection of the 
 police. 
 
 Especially has Ah Sin the right to be sent home 
 with a good opinion of Christian civilization. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] Thousands of these Chinamen have gone 
 back to the pleasant but overburdened land, which 
 stretches its cities almost in a continuous line from 
 the Yellow Sea to the Himalayas. These returned 
 men are scattered through a population, nine-tenths 
 of whom have never heard the central truths of 
 Christian civilization. My opinion is, that there has 
 never been such a strategic opportunity offered to 
 the American Church as now, so far as the evangeli¬ 
 zation of China is concerned. We have a large Chi¬ 
 nese population here, eager to learn, and eager to 
 earn; and with these two purposes behind every 
 Chinaman who lands here, to earn something, and 
 learn the English language, we can draw him enough 
 aside, to be disgusted with his joss-house, and to go 
 back reporting that Christian civilization is better 
 than Asiatic. When we are asked to vote the China¬ 
 man out of this land, we are to remember that for 
 the spread of the highest civilization through a quar¬ 
 ter of the population of the globe, California is the 
 door to China. [Applause.] 
 
180 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 There is a celebrated oration by Massillon in which 
 he adjures his hearers, at a certain point, to imagine 
 the doors of the temple in which he was speaking to 
 be closed. He then directs them to look upward, 
 and imagine the roof opening upon the azure, and 
 the last day appearing in the infinite spaces. The 
 judgment is set, and you are alone, and how many 
 here will judge themselves to be among the elect? 
 Massillon was philosophically wise in what you call 
 a strange rhetorical device, for it is certain that only 
 in solitude, only in the hush of the visible presence 
 of death and the judgment, can we understand con¬ 
 science. Voltaire admired this oration of Massillon’s. 
 When Louis XIV. heard it in the chapel at Ver¬ 
 sailles, he covered his face with his trembling hands. 
 When it was delivered in the Church of St. Eustache, 
 in Paris, the whole audience rose with a sudden 
 movement, uttering a deep, wailing cry of terror and 
 faith, as if a thunderbolt had suddenly fallen in the 
 middle of the temple. (Massillon, Sur le Petit 
 Nombre des Plus. See Le Cardinal Maury, Essai 
 sur VEloquence de la Chaired) 
 
 The inner sky, like the outer, is studied best in its 
 depths, when God shuts up the world in his ebony 
 box, to use George Herbert’s phrase. Our secret 
 thoughts are rarely heard except in secret. No man 
 knows what conscience is until he understands what 
 solitude can teach him concerning it. Thomas Paino 
 could not bear to be left alone. Many an inmate of 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 181 
 
 prison-wards dreads solitary confinement more than 
 any thing else. The secret of solitude is that there 
 is no solitude. At Mount Holyoke, at Wellesley, and 
 in Vassar College, every pupil is advised to be a cer¬ 
 tain period each day alone, with the Bible and with 
 God. If any here think they have sounded the depths 
 of their own natures, if any suppose they have mapped 
 all the constellations in the heavens even of Transcen¬ 
 dentalism, let them thoughtfully and persistently try 
 the experiment of looking out of the cool, deep well 
 of solitude into the sky; and even at noonday they 
 will find there vast depths, and constellations visible, 
 fit to blanch the cheeks. These are facts. That is 
 the way human nature acts. Therefore Massillon 
 shall call pause here to-day, while I ask whether 
 conscience is- infallible, and whether in its infallibil¬ 
 ity we have not the touch and the vision of a per¬ 
 sonal God? Imagine the doors closed, and the judg¬ 
 ment set. 
 
 1. Conscience is that which perceives and feels 
 rightness and oughtness in moral motives, — that is, 
 in choices and intentions. 
 
 2. The word motive has three meanings,—allure¬ 
 ment, appetite, intention. 
 
 3. When Csesar crossed the Rubicon, his allure¬ 
 ment, or objective natural motive, was the political 
 prize of supreme power in the Roman Empire. 
 
 That was wholly outside of himself. He was not 
 responsible for its existence. Nevertheless it was a 
 motive to him, in the sense of allurement. 
 
 4. His appetite, or subjective natural motive, was 
 
182 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 made up of his constitutional endowments, including 
 ambition and love of power. 
 
 He did not create these. They were wholly out¬ 
 side the range of his choice. 
 
 5. In neither of these senses of the word motives 
 does conscience judge them; and in neither of these 
 senses are we responsible for them. 
 
 6. But Caesar’s intention in crossing the Rubicon 
 was determined by himself: he put forth his own 
 choice; his preferences or moral motives were wholly 
 his own ; and were, as he was pleased to make them, 
 either honorable or dishonorable, good or bad. 
 
 7. In this sense of the word motives we are respon¬ 
 sible for them, and conscience does judge them. 
 
 8. Most mischievous confusion of thought arises 
 from not distinguishing the three things signified by 
 the word motives. 
 
 Here is a library, and there a whiskey-den or some 
 other Gehenna breathing-hole. I stand in the middle 
 of the street between them, and freely choose into 
 which I will go. I am a human being. There is 
 whiskey yonder ; that may be an allurement. I did 
 not put it there; I am not responsible for its intox¬ 
 icating power. In one sense it may be called a mo¬ 
 tive to me ; but call it simply an allurement , and you 
 will speak with greater accuracy. I have disordered 
 appetites; I have inherited bad blood, it may be, from 
 some intemperate ancestor; and I have not taken 
 care of myself; I have allowed nerve-tracks of intem¬ 
 perance to groove themselves into my physical organ 
 ism, and there is a powerful tendency on the part of 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 183 
 
 my diseased blood toward that place of temptation. 
 I am not responsible for that. I may have been for 
 the fostering of the tendency, or for the undue inten¬ 
 sifying of a natural appetite for excitement. But I 
 did not create the constitutional tendencies which 
 move me. If you call these motives, I am not 
 responsible for them; but outward allurements and 
 inward appetites are not the only forces concerned 
 here. Finally, I make up my mind that I will 
 go in there, and drink. It is my intention to go 
 in there, and drink. I put forth a choice. I step 
 freely into that place of temptation. I come out a 
 beast. I am responsible for that. I did that from 
 my own intention, and by my own motive, choice, 
 and purpose, in obedience to an elective preference 
 which I put forth. Here is motive, in the sense not 
 of allurement , or appetite , but in that of intention; 
 and this is what conscience judges. Intentions are 
 the zenith of the human inner sky; and looking up 
 into their depths whoever uses the eyes of science 
 will see a Throne, and the books opened, and a judg¬ 
 ment bar. These are incontrovertible facts of human 
 nature. 
 
 But here is a library, and there are books in it. I 
 know their value. They are a motive to me, in the 
 sense of allurement, or what the writers on ethics call 
 an objective natural motive. But I did not place the 
 books on the shelves; I am not at all responsible for 
 their attractive powers; they are an allurement only. 
 Moreover, I have intellectual curiosity, or some moral 
 desire, it may be, for study; and this moves me 
 
184 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 toward the library; but I am not to be praised for 
 that. Perhaps I inherit it. I may have intensified 
 the power of these natural desires; but an intellec¬ 
 tual and moral equipment belongs to me as a human 
 being; and as a motive I am not responsible for it; 
 aud conscience does not judge me for its possession. 
 It is an appetite, or what the books call a subjective 
 natural motive. But now I make up my mind to 
 go into that library. That is my act. I intend to go 
 there, and I have the good motive of obtaining in¬ 
 formation to increase my usefulness, or, it may be, the 
 base motive of acquiring knowledge to enlarge my 
 powers of self-display. I have a motive, a secret in¬ 
 tention, a purpose, which I alone am putting forth, 
 and for which I alone, before conscience, am responsi¬ 
 ble. Thus, in the whole range of his free intentions, 
 a man finds conscience always standing before him, 
 with the doors closed, and the skies opened, and the 
 judgment set. 
 
 You know that these are facts ; and, if you please, 
 they are just as important facts as any thing about 
 the Ichthyosaurus or the Plesiosaurus. They are 
 as important as speculations about any object in 
 the Zoological Museums in Cambridge yonder; they 
 are as important as any thing we touch with the 
 microscope or scalpel; and, indeed, quite measure- 
 lessly more so. Let us distinguish the three classes 
 of motives, or allurements, appetites, and intentions; 
 and be unalterably sure that, however much force 
 the first and second may have, we are responsible 
 for the third. 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 185 
 
 A distinguished theological teacher once illustrated 
 the difference of the three kinds of motives by the 
 case of a boy climbing an apple-tree to steal apples. 
 The apples are the objective natural motive; the 
 boy’s appetite is the subjective natural motive; his 
 intention is his moral motive. The boy climbs the 
 tree to get the apples, and there is his exterior natu¬ 
 ral motive. He climbs the tree because he is hungry, 
 and there is his interior natural motive. He climbs 
 the tree because he has a mind to, and that is the 
 motive for which he is responsible. [Applause.] 
 
 A shallow, and often vulgar, semi-infidel paper in 
 Boston has lately discovered that motives and inten¬ 
 tions are not the same, and that we are not responsible 
 for our motives. Certain haughty critics of this lec¬ 
 tureship, who assert that we are never responsible for 
 our motives, will do well to look at any common 
 vocabulary of philosophy, such as Flemming’s or 
 Krauth’s, under the word Motive, and they will find 
 that the distinctions on which I have now insisted 
 are not invented for the occasion, but are as old as 
 Plato. 
 
 But so closely does the topic of Conscience touch 
 that of the Will, that we need yet further definitions. 
 We are now on contested ground, where ambiguity 
 of phraseology has been an exhaustless source of 
 debate. 
 
 6. Will is the power of putting forth choice, or 
 imperative volition. 
 
 10. Choice is agreeable elective preference. It is 
 preceded by a comparison of at least two objects, 
 
188 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and by an excitement of the sensibilities in relation 
 to the objects compared. It may be followed by acts 
 tending to gratify the choice. All choice implies 
 ratherness. Therefore the choice of an object in¬ 
 volves the refusal of its opposite. 
 
 Choice cannot be defined. You cannot define the 
 word white. You can give a nominal definition of 
 it, but not a real one; and so of choice we can give no 
 real, but only a nominal definition. However, let 
 choice be called agreeable elective preference. It is 
 important to put into the idea of choice this trait of 
 agreeableness, for mere resolution is not choice. The 
 love which the nature of things and the Scriptures 
 command us to have for virtue is choice; that is, 
 we are so to choose it as to be happy in doing so; we 
 are to make duty a delight. We are to choose good, 
 and to be glad in it. No man chooses good unless he 
 likes to choose it. Every choice implies free rather¬ 
 ness. That act of the will which we call elective 
 preference is always agreeable. Forced preference 
 is a phrase involving self-contradiction. Agreeable 
 elective preference, that and nothing less, is choice. 
 This meaning harmonizes well with all the proverbs 
 of the nations. “ What a man loves, he is.” Show 
 me what a man chooses, and I wiil show you what 
 he likes most, and what he is most like. 
 
 (1) Our sense of what ought to be, invariably 
 requires us to choose what conscience commands. 
 
 (2) To choose is to love. 
 
 (3) Since, therefore, there is a personal God in con¬ 
 science, to follow the still small voice is not only to 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 181 
 
 believe that God is a Spirit, and that he touches us, 
 but to be glad that he is and does so. 
 
 These three propositions are the unassailable foun¬ 
 dations of the religion of science. 
 
 As to the truth that all virtue consists in choice, 
 New England philosophy stands in contrast with 
 European. Very often, by choice, European philoso¬ 
 phers mean volition, resolution; and when New Eng¬ 
 land philosophy, represented by Transcendentalism 
 as well as by Jonathan Edwards, asserts that all vir¬ 
 tue consists in choice, it was once not always under¬ 
 stood in Scotland, and still less often in England and 
 in Germany, that by choice Edwards meant agreea¬ 
 ble elective preference of virtue. We say that all 
 sin is in choice, when we mean by that word an agree¬ 
 able elective preference. We choose darkness rather 
 than light only when we love it more. We choose light 
 rather than darkness only when we love the latter 
 the less. The innermost love of the soul is indicated 
 by its elective agreeable preference. 
 
 11. Intention may be defined as a resolved choice. 
 When the fixed plan of executing that choice is 
 entertained by the mind, the intention is called a 
 purpose. 
 
 12. Motives , defined as intentions , choices , and pur¬ 
 poses, are perceived by conscience to be right or wrong. 
 
 Accurate observation of our mental and moral ex¬ 
 perience demonstrates that we have within us a fac¬ 
 ulty which points out the difference between right and 
 wrong, in our intentions and choices, thus defined, as 
 :he faculty of physical taste points out the difference 
 
188 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 between tlie sweet and the bitter. We have, there¬ 
 fore, in human nature itself one sure support for 
 a religion that will bear the examination of the 
 ages. I am appealing to proof-texts from the oldest 
 Scriptures, that is, the nature of things. Some 
 silly person wrote the other day from Cambridge, 
 England, that in this lectureship it is not thought 
 worth while to cite the Bible, and that the attempt 
 is merely to build up a religion without any refer¬ 
 ence to the Scriptures. The castle of the Scrip¬ 
 tures stands here, and there are defenders in it. 
 After nineteen centuries of victorious repulsion of 
 assaults, it needs no assistance from me. But 
 haughty Science comes forward, with other weapons; 
 and I have been placed here by friends of free dis¬ 
 cussion, not to instruct them in any thing Biblical or 
 scientific that they do not know, but to go down 
 into the field before the castle, and with the very 
 weapons of these arrogant foes to meet them in 
 their own redoubts. [Applause.] When religious 
 science, with only the equipment that natural science 
 can give it, comes into the open field, foregoing the 
 aid to be derived from its own fortress, and willing 
 to meet all objections on the ground of bare Rea¬ 
 son, it is merely a begging of the entire question to 
 say that the Bible has been given up. On Sundays 
 I go into that fortress, if you please. [Applause.] 
 
 It will not now seem other than scientific to assert, 
 in view of the propositions already put before you, 
 that: — 
 
 18. All sin or holiness consists, not in volition, but 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 189 
 
 in elective preference, choices, intentions, moral 
 motives. 
 
 External acts possess expediency or inexpediency, 
 harmfulness or mischievousness; and their character 
 in these respects I must ascertain by a combined 
 use of judgment and conscience. I do not know by 
 conscience whether you are a good man, or a bad 
 man; I do not know by conscience whether I ought 
 to defend the President’s Southern policy or not. It 
 is a question of judgment, what I ought to do con¬ 
 cerning the South. I must gather all the facts; I 
 must look at human experience; I must take the 
 entire light I have, or can get; and then, in the 
 action I choose, conscience will tell me whether my 
 intentions are good or bad; that is, whether I am 
 willing to follow all the illumination I possess or can 
 obtain, or not. I know what my motives are in my 
 political action; I know what I intend to effect; and 
 you all judge men by their intentions in the last 
 resort. 
 
 Conscience guarantees only good intentions. Are 
 they enough? If conscience, when truly followed, 
 does not give us soundness of judgment, really it is 
 not a very important faculty, you say. But let us 
 notice what can be proved beyond a doubt; namely, 
 that a man who follows conscience we are able to 
 respect, and that we are not able to respect a man 
 who does not follow it. It is a stern fact that uncon- 
 scientious intentions no human being is able to re¬ 
 spect. We cannot help calling a man respectable 
 who is possessed of good intentions; nor can we help 
 
190 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 finding him not respectable who is not possessed of 
 them. There is Stonewall Jackson, and here is John 
 Brown. Let us suppose that Stonewall Jackson 
 believes that John Brown is utterly honest; and 
 let us assume that John Brown believes the same 
 of Jackson. Brown’s action appears to Jackson to 
 be very mischievous, and Jackson’s action appears 
 to Brown to be equally so. In fact, they are cross¬ 
 ing bayonets in a civil war; but they are both 
 men of prayer, men of confirmed religious habits, 
 and-we have reason to believe that they are endeav¬ 
 oring to be conscientious. I do not believe Stone¬ 
 wall Jackson followed all the light he had; nor do I 
 believe John Brown did. But suppose that Jackson 
 did follow all the light he had, or could get, and sup¬ 
 pose that John Brown did, and that each is convinced 
 of this fact as to the other: then, although they are 
 ready in the settlement of practical measures to 
 cross bayonets, you cannot help their coming to¬ 
 gether when the measures are settled, and shaking 
 hands with each other as respectable men. You 
 know that to be the fact. External acts differ to 
 the degree of crossing bayonets; but, as each does 
 the best he knows how, each respects the other, and 
 absolutely cannot help doing so. This is a singular 
 fact in the soul; but this is the way we are made. 
 We find that Governor Wise, when he looked into 
 the eyes of John Brown, and saw honesty there, and 
 that others who noticed his mood in his last hours, 
 were thrown into a kind of awe by that border 
 warrior. He meant right; and respect for that 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE ? 
 
 191 
 
 man’s soul is not confined to the circle of the moun¬ 
 tains between which he lies in my native county in 
 Northern New York. I have heard the summer wind 
 sighing over the grave of John Brown, and have 
 stood there and gazed upon Mount Marcy and 
 Whiteface and Lake Placid; but because I believed 
 that this man’s conscience was a Lake Placid, and 
 his resolution to follow it firm as Marcy, firm as 
 Whiteface, firm as any of those gigantic peaks in 
 my native Switzerland, I felt sure that his soul was 
 marching on [applause], and that when his spirit 
 smote slavery, the tree after that was timber. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] It did not fall at once, but it was no longer 
 alive. 
 
 There was a persecutor of the early Church who 
 verily thought he ought to do many things against 
 Christianity. He himself teaches us that he needed 
 pardon, but that mercy was shown him because of 
 his ignorance. Who will say that he did not sup¬ 
 press light? Not I. He did immense mischief while 
 his judgment was not corrected; and if he suppressed 
 light, or tutored it, his choices were not good. This 
 is most dangerous ground. I know on what treach¬ 
 erous soil I tread, unless definitions are kept in view. 
 Choice means love; conscientiousness is glad self¬ 
 surrender to a personal God in conscience, or to what 
 ought to be in motives. Let us take the precaution 
 of using pictures as well as metaphysical phrases. 
 There is a point in the bounding, resonant Andros¬ 
 coggin at which is an island, and on it lives a hermit. 
 Twenty savages are sailing down in the midnight to 
 
192 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 surprise him and put him to death. A Maine legend 
 says that he puts a light below the deadly Lewiston 
 waterfalls that lie just beyond his island. The In¬ 
 dians think the torch is in his hut; row toward it ; 
 and all of them make a sudden, dizzy, unexpected 
 plunge to death. The Indians were in one sense 
 right; they wanted to land where the light was; but 
 the light was below the falls, and not above. It is 
 tolerably important to know where the beacon is, 
 whether below or above the cataract. 
 
 Rothe well says that the supreme sin is the sup¬ 
 pression of light, or the attempt to deceive the 
 cognitive faculty. 
 
 Conscience is your magnetic needle. Reason is 
 your chart. But I would rather have a crew willing 
 to follow, the indications of the needle, and giving 
 themselves no great trouble as to the chart, than a 
 crew that had ever so good a chart and no needle at 
 all. Which is more important in the high seas of 
 passion, the needle Conscience or the chart Reason ? 
 We know it was the discovery of the physical needle 
 that made navigation possible on the physical seas; 
 and loyalty to the spiritual magnetic needle alone 
 makes navigation safe on the spiritual seas. When we 
 find a needle in man through which flow magnetic 
 currents and courses of influence that roll around 
 the whole globe and fill the universe, causing every 
 orb to balance with upright pole, we know there is 
 in the needle something that is in it but not of it ; 
 and we may well stand in awe of it, and refuse to 
 tutor it. Show me a crew without a chart, but will- 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE? 
 
 193 
 
 ing to follow the needle, and I will show you safe 
 navigators; but show me a crew with a chart who 
 will not look at the needle, and I will show you nav¬ 
 igators near wreck. Conscience requires every man 
 to mean w^ell, and to do his best. It requires us to 
 follow not only all the light we have, but all we can 
 obtain, and to do so gladly. Give me a Lincoln, and 
 I will trust a nation’s welfare to him, for the judg¬ 
 ment of the leader will grow right by following all 
 the illumination he possesses. Give me a Lord 
 Bacon, with never so' wide windows of merely intel¬ 
 lectual illumination, and no purpose of doing the 
 best he knows how, and I dare not trust him where 
 I would trust a Lincoln of far inferior intellectual 
 powers. You know that it is a right heart that, in 
 the end, makes a safe head; and the ancients used 
 to say that the punishment of a knave is that he loses 
 good judgment. [Applause.] 
 
 14. John Stuart Mill, although a determined oppo¬ 
 nent of the intuitional school in philosophy, admits 
 that at least one of our perceptions, namely, that a 
 thing cannot both exist and not exist at the same 
 time and in the same sense, is “ primordial,” and not 
 the result of experience. 
 
 The assumption of the associational school in phi¬ 
 losophy is that all axioms are merely the result of 
 experience, and might have been different if we had 
 been boxed about differently in our contact with life. 
 It has been taught that there may be worlds where 
 two and two do not make four, and where the whole 
 is not greater than a part. But John Stuart Mill, 
 
194 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 who is the foremost Coryphseus in the associational 
 school of metaphysics, admits that our incapacity of 
 conceiving the same thing as existing and not exist¬ 
 ing “ may be primordial. All inconceivabilities may 
 be reduced to inseparable association combined with 
 the original inconceivability of a direct contradic¬ 
 tion.” (Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamil¬ 
 ton's Philosophy , vol. i. chap. 6.) This is a far- 
 reaching concession. Here is a square ; it cannot be 
 a circle. Here is a circle; it cannot be a square. 
 At one and the same time one and the same object 
 cannot be black and white. Mill says this percep¬ 
 tion is primordial. It does not arise from experi¬ 
 ence ; a thing must exist or not exist; and the prop¬ 
 osition that a thing can exist and not exist at the 
 same time and in the same sense, Mill says is per¬ 
 ceived to be true by a primordial peculiarity of the 
 mind. If any one of Kant’s or Hamilton’s unsuc¬ 
 cessful critics is dissatisfied with the use of the word 
 intuitive, I will be satisfied with the use of Mill’s 
 word, primordial. 
 
 15. If we are so made that the distinction between 
 a whole and a part is primordial, or perceived by a 
 power which we possess antecedent to all experience, 
 it may be proved that conscience, within the sphere 
 of motives or intentions, is infallible. 
 
 16. To follow conscience is to suppress no light, 
 that is, to follow the whole and not a part of our 
 light. 
 
 17. Precisely this primordial or intuitive knowl¬ 
 edge, therefore, is that which is involved in the 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE ? 
 
 195 
 
 direct vision conscience has of the moral character 
 of motives. 
 
 18. Every man does know infallibly whether he 
 means to do the best he knows how, or not, in any 
 deliberate choice. By a primordial faculty not de¬ 
 rived from experience, he knows whether the pur- 
 £>ose or intention of following all the light he has 
 exists or does not exist in his mind. 
 
 Called upon to choose what I will do, I have a 
 certain amount of light. The interior of my soul is 
 like the interior of this Temple; and now I am to 
 decide whether I will act according to all my illumi¬ 
 nation candidly or not. I know whether I turn 
 away from the light or not. I know whether I look 
 on the whole or on a part only of this illumination. 
 Mill says that our direct perception of the difference 
 between a whole and a part is primordial. Well, I 
 affirm that if it is primordial in physical things, it is 
 primordial in spiritual things. I have illumination, 
 and I know whether I suppress a part of it. I know 
 whether the whole is taken as my guide, or whether 
 I turn away from some section of the radiance. The 
 distinction between the whole and a part is primordi- 
 ally perceived in the field of mental vision as certain¬ 
 ly as it is in the field of physical vision. It is just 
 as infallibly perceived there as here. The perception 
 in both cases is a direct vision of self-evident truth. 
 
 There is an ancient Book that speaks of the mis¬ 
 chief of the suppression of light. There is a Vol¬ 
 ume which says that “ this is the condemnation, that 
 ight is come into the world, and men love darkness 
 
196 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 rather than light.” All this is said in connection 
 with the most subtle doctrines concerning “ the 
 Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world.” I find, therefore, that this general view of 
 conscience, as something which always pronounces it 
 right to follow all the radiance we have, and wrong 
 to suppress light, coincides marvellously with the 
 profoundest thought of Christianity, that whoever 
 tutors “the Light that lighteth every man that com¬ 
 eth into the world ” is acting against Light which 
 “ in the beginning was with God, and was God.” 
 
 19. Conscience invariably decides that to suppress 
 light is w T rong, and that to follow all the light we 
 have or can obtain, and to do so without the slightest 
 tutoring of the radiance, is right. 
 
 20. The perception of the difference between 
 meaning right and meaning wrong in this sense is 
 primordial, or intuitive; and the difference exhibits 
 the three traits of all intuitive truth, — self-evidence, 
 necessity, and universality. 
 
 If the proposition that a whole is greater than a 
 part is self-evident, necessary, universally believed as 
 soon as men understand the terms, so the distinction 
 between following the whole or a part of our light 
 is self-evident, necessary, and universally admitted as 
 soon as men understand the terms. Therefore, if 
 you use the word primordial as to the small things 
 of physical vision, I will use it as to the great things 
 of spiritual vision. If you use the word necessary 
 as to self-evident truth here, I will use it as to self- 
 evident there. If, in the same connection, you use 
 
IS CONSCIENCE INFALLIBLE ? 
 
 197 
 
 the word infallible here, I will rise into the upper 
 heaven, and use the word infallible there. 
 
 21. With equal clearness conscience always points 
 out that we ought to follow good motives, and not 
 follow bad as here defined. 
 
 22. Within the field of intentions or the moral 
 motives, therefore, conscience has the infallibility 
 which belongs to the perception of self-evident 
 truths, and in Kant’s language “ an erring conscience 
 is a chimera.” 
 
 There are men who do not know that when they 
 tutor the magnetic needle they are tutoring currents 
 that enswathe the globe and all worlds. There are 
 men who do not know that when they tutor con¬ 
 science they are tutoring magnetisms which pervade 
 both the universe of souls and its Author. Beware 
 how you put the finger of special pleading on the 
 quivering needle of conscience, and forbid it to go 
 north, south, east, or west; beware of failing to 
 balance it on a hair’s point; for whoever tutors that 
 primordial, necessary, universal, infallible perception, 
 tutors a Personal God. [Applause.] 
 
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 VIIT. 
 
 CONSCIENCE AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
 BELIGION OF SCIENCE. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-EIGHTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 NOV. 19. 
 
Handle so, dass die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als 
 Princip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten konne. 
 
 Kant: Prak. Vernunft, vii 
 
 The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and 
 wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and upon whom we depend, 
 and the idea of ourselves, as understanding rational beings, being 
 such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and 
 pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action as 
 might place morality among the sciences capable of demonstration, 
 wherein, I doubt not, but from self-evident propositions, by neces¬ 
 sary consequences as incontestable as those in mathematics, the 
 measures of right and wrong might be made out. 
 
 TjOCKk: Human Understanding. 
 
i 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CONSCIENCE AS THE FOUNDATION OF 
 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 
 
 PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 The Roman pagan Epictetus wrote: “ Dare to 
 look up to God, and say, Deal with me in the future 
 as thou wilt; I am of the same mind as thou art; I 
 am thine; I refuse nothing that pleases thee; lead 
 me where thou wilt; clothe me in any dress thou 
 choosest.” (Epictetus, book ii., chap, xvi.) Modern 
 civilization is being clothed in a robe of great cities. 
 It ought, if it has the wisdom of Epictetus, to look 
 up and say to Almighty Providence, “ Clothe me as 
 thou pleasest; I am of the same mind as thou art.” 
 Perishing and dangerous classes are accumulating in 
 cities; and in cities, therefore, the problem of the 
 right management of these classes is to be solved. It 
 appears to be the purpose of Providence, to gather 
 men more and more into cities, and to save them 
 there. City philanthropic and religious effort for the 
 masses of plain and poor men in cities is demanded, 
 and will certainly be honored of God. So far as my 
 
 knowledge extends, the most important advances that 
 
 201 
 
202 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 have been made in America in reaching the un¬ 
 churched masses in large towns, have been effected 
 through the Young Men’s Christian Associations and 
 city tabernacles. A luxurious age naturally holds 
 the opinion that the Church should be a place for the 
 select, as well as the elect. But the opinion of Prov¬ 
 idence concerning modern times appears to be that 
 the telephone and the railway and the telegraph, at 
 their points of intersection, are to draw average men 
 together in suffocated crowds. Already in the 
 United States we have one-fifth of our population in 
 cities, and we had but one twenty-fifth in great 
 towns in 1800. 
 
 Five things appear to me to be incontrovertible : — 
 
 1. That the American Church, as organized under 
 the voluntary system, is not reaching the unchurched 
 masses in our large cities with due effectiveness. I 
 do not deny that the churches reach the masses; 
 but they are not so reaching them as to make the 
 perishing and dangerous populations safe under 
 American suffrage, under our loose government by 
 careless elections, under our elective judiciary, and 
 with the rising importance of the questions between 
 labor and capital. 
 
 2. That the unchurched masses, or unseated par¬ 
 ishioners in great towns, have often in many cities of 
 Great Britain and the United States been reached 
 effectively when addressed earnestly in tabernacles 
 and in free halls for evangelistic services, by Young 
 Men’s Christian Associations, or by the union of 
 churches; and that a large floating population in our 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 203 
 
 cities is much more likely to be brought within hear¬ 
 ing of religious truths in this way than by purchased 
 pews of their own in places of worship. 
 
 3. That, if the American churches can reach the 
 unchurched masses of our cities, they ought to do so; 
 and that to neglect an opportunity, growing wider 
 and wider every year, for the management of the 
 perishing and dangerous populations in a Christian 
 way, is a crime. We have opportunity open in one 
 direction. It does not suit us, or not all of us; but 
 it is the instrumentality which has thus far been most 
 successful; and, until some more fruitful method of 
 labor offers itself, Providence seems to indicate that 
 tabernacles have a mission. 
 
 4. That when the masses who do not attend the 
 churches have been reached through tabernacles, 
 they are more easily reached through the regular 
 churches. 
 
 5. That there ought, therefore, to be no more ri¬ 
 valry between the work of Young Men’s Christian 
 Associations and city tabernacles conducted with 
 evangelical and earnest leaders, on the one hand, and 
 the work of the regular churches on the other, than 
 between the fingers and the palm. [Applause.] 
 
 It may be that I venture something in defending 
 these propositions; but you will not accuse me of 
 selfish motives, for I have no church and no deacons 
 and no tabernacle. I am looking only to the fact that 
 America needs management in her great cities. If 
 we can manage the one-fifth of her population who 
 live in large towns, we can take care of the rest; but 
 
204 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 if we cnnnot manage that perishing and dangerous 
 part of her population, the black angels assuredly 
 
 v will. 
 
 What has been done in Boston ? Let us answer 
 that question two years hence. Enough time has 
 elapsed in Great Britain to test the work of the Amer¬ 
 ican evangelists there. I hold in my hands an opin¬ 
 ion of a revered Englishman, who has just been in¬ 
 structing Yale College, Dr. Dale, and which' I shall 
 venture to read. It is well known that Mr. Spur¬ 
 geon, who was at first somewhat shy of indorsing the 
 evangelists’ work in Great Britain, now does so most 
 thoroughly. He has followed the good English rule, 
 and under the test of experience the work approves 
 itself to his very experienced judgment. And here 
 is another judgment, also experienced: — 
 
 “ It is with the liveliest satisfaction and the deepest 
 gratitude,” says Dr. Dale, “ that I bear witness to the 
 reality and permanency of the impression made on 
 our community during the fortnight of Mr. Moody’s 
 stay. Fourteen hundred persons were converted, and 
 united with the churches of Birmingham; six hun¬ 
 dred others had received religious impressions, who 
 did not then profess full light and joy in believing. 
 Before Mr. Moody’s departure a converts’ meeting 
 was held, to which no one was admitted except by 
 ticket. Cards were distributed among the fourteen 
 hundred present, and each new convert was requested 
 to write upon his card his own name and address, and 
 the name of the church with which he desired to 
 connect himself. Of these cards I received a hum 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE EELIGION OF SCIENCE. 205 
 
 died and twenty. I preached a converts’ sermon on 
 Acts i. 15, last clause: 4 The number of names 
 together were about a hundred and twenty.’ I was 
 unable to visit and examine them personally. I ac¬ 
 cordingly distributed the cards among several mem¬ 
 bers of the church, and sent them out to examine and 
 report. Many of the letters which I received in 
 response read like romances. Tales of want and 
 woe, and struggle with temptation, and lives of sin! 
 The converts were of various social positions, but the 
 large majority were profane, drunken, irreligious, and 
 even immoral. Fearing lest hesitation and delay 
 might arouse on their part suspicion of my confi¬ 
 dence in their sincerity, I received them into the 
 church without the usual probation. Between a 
 hundred and twenty and a hundred and thirty were 
 thus received. I expected numerous defections among 
 these, owing to the class of society to which they be¬ 
 long and the imperfect examination upon which they 
 were admitted. Two years and a half have elapsed. 
 The fruits remain. I hear of profane women, who 
 were the terror of their neighborhoods, living sweet 
 and lovely lives, and of drunkards reformed. I went 
 over the entire list with assistance just before 
 leaving for America, and it resulted from that inves¬ 
 tigation, that not more than eight, or, at the most, 
 nine, of the entire number, have fallen away. More¬ 
 over, the impulse which Mr. Moody’s visit gave to 
 our whole church life still continues. It is one of 
 the greatest disappointments of my visit to this coun¬ 
 try, that I have been unable to meet a man whom J 
 
206 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 learned, in the brief time he was with us, to love and 
 to esteem.” [Applause.] 
 
 This city is not cold or haughty, except on the 
 surface. Boston desires safety in her new enter¬ 
 prises, and applies stern tests, indeed, to all religious 
 proceedings. Bat with the experience of Birming¬ 
 ham, Liverpool, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Phil¬ 
 adelphia, New York, and Chicago, behind her, ought 
 not Boston to drop a little of her iciness of reserve, 
 and see to it that the fruits of last winter, already 
 reaped, are bound up, and other laborers sent into 
 the harvest, white, at this hour, for the sickle ? [Ap¬ 
 plause.] 
 
 Have we visited the five thousand whose names 
 a]id residences were ascertained and recorded at a 
 meeting of converts? I am not given to counting 
 the results of revivals; but it is very well known that 
 those who have examined the facts most elaborately 
 assert in public prints, over their own signatures, 
 that in the Tabernacle meetings last winter at least 
 five thousand persons made up their minds to do 
 their duty. When, by other methods, not one of 
 which do I underrate, have the churches of Boston 
 done as much ? When have you reached the intem¬ 
 perate as well as you did last winter ? When, es¬ 
 pecially, have you exhibited any such blessed activity 
 in personal visitation among the degraded ? It is a 
 fact that the most leprous quarters of this city were 
 visited by noble women, and that again and again 
 brands were snatched from the burning. It is the 
 subtle temptation of our luxurious civilization, that 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 207 
 
 we are above such work, and that, because we aie 
 above it, we like to have a theology preached which 
 never asserts that a man can be ruined, and especially 
 not that a woman can be. This gospel of luxury, 
 this unscientific liberalism, this tendency to make 
 religion genial, whether it is true to the nature of 
 things or not, is a temptation which cannot be con¬ 
 quered unless we go down face to face with the sci¬ 
 entific method to the edges of the Korah’s pits where 
 men are swallowed up alive. When the Church has 
 due practical activity, she will have, because she will 
 be obliged to have, a scientific theology, tender as 
 the dew, clear as the sunbeam, serious as the light¬ 
 ning. Christianity once in action can never be con¬ 
 tent with limp and lavender liberalism; an unaggress- 
 ive indifference to the fact that men can be ruined; 
 or a religion that believes in plush or velvet, and the 
 genial, rather than in usefulness, and the scienti¬ 
 fically true. 
 
 Surely the activity of the churches here last win¬ 
 ter was sufficient to repay them for all they did. If 
 no good effects had come from it except the quicken¬ 
 ing of practical Christian work, that alone would 
 have been worth all the effort put forth. What a 
 good thing it was to see all denominations united! 
 Some, from whom we could have expected only si¬ 
 lence, were on our side. When the churches are 
 accused of lacking union, let the union efforts made 
 in our cities and in the tabernacles repel the charge. 
 
 There is a Lord’s table in the Church; and, when 
 invitations to it are given, all denominations, or very 
 
208 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 nearly all, are brought together. [Applause.] To 
 me, the Church is best represented by the union 
 signified by that common invitation. In the alcoves 
 of a great library, sometimes we have a recess filled 
 with books on Greece; then another with books on 
 Rome; but all the recesses open into one hall. So 
 the different denominations are but recesses in one 
 vast temple; they all open out into one great palace 
 floor, up and down which, in stern times when we 
 ready do our duty for the perishing and dangerous, 
 our Lord walks, arm in arm, not with the Baptist, not 
 with the Presbyterian, not with the Methodist, not 
 with the Congregationalist, not with the Episcopalian, 
 but with the whole Church, which is his living gar¬ 
 ment. [Applause.] 
 
 You say that the work done in tabernacles and 
 Young Men’s Christian Associations is often superfi¬ 
 cial. Will you see to it that men are invited into 
 activity in these places who have proper equipments? 
 Some men say the wrong thing technically, in their 
 expression of religious truth, and yet make the right 
 impression; and some men say precisely the right 
 thing,—very martinets of language in theology,— 
 and make a wrong impression. [Applause.] Is it no , c 
 a matter of amazement, when five thousand persons 
 here in Boston have been brought to a resolution 
 to do their duty, and a great part of them have 
 united with the church, that we should hear from the 
 collegiate city of New Haven very little response, 
 except the statement that Mr. Moody’s views ar^ not 
 sound on the matter of the Second Advene? I had 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 2U9 
 
 known Mr. Moody two years before I knew what 
 his views on the Second Advent were; and, if his 
 great usefulness continues, I shall know him twenty 
 years longer before I care. Provided his devout 
 effort is blessed of God, as it has been; provided 
 he is endowed from on high with the capacity to 
 reach, through his tenderness of heart, through his 
 marvellous practical sagacity, and through the activity 
 that almost made him an invalid here in Boston, 
 working until midnight, and carrying his labor 
 through with a zeal that no man could understand 
 who did not help in it: provided he continues labor 
 of that sort, I, for one, shall consider it an honor to 
 Boston if she can help him a little, and not criticise 
 him at all. [Applause.] He is abundantly able to 
 do without the appreciation of this city, where, after 
 all, he has been appreciated well; and where his 
 work, I think, has been as remarkable as in any other 
 city he ever visited. 
 
 Twice the Tabernacle has been open this season, 
 and twice it has been well filled. Hundreds go there 
 who do not go to the regular churches. The un¬ 
 churched masses are to be criticised for not being 
 willing to go to established places of worship. Every 
 church in America is the result of the voluntary sys¬ 
 tem. We shall have, no doubt, luxurious churches 
 in our luxurious age and time; but there will be and 
 there are churches for the average laborer; churches 
 glad to see anybody who is decently clad, and to give 
 a good seat to the man who may be hungry and pos¬ 
 sibly not quite cleanly. I believe that nine out of 
 
210 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 ten of our churches are willing to see all ranks of 
 society in God’s house, and to measure them there 
 only by the standard of religious character. When 
 the classes that we wish to reach are not reached by 
 the regular churches, and when they can be reached 
 by tabernacles and Young Men’s Christian Associa¬ 
 tions 3 when an audience of five thousand comes to¬ 
 gether in an open hall, — can such an opportunity 
 be innocently thrown away? 
 
 We are, I think, far underrating the willingness 
 of the rougher class in our large cities to hear Chris¬ 
 tian truth. We are far from meeting their hunger. 
 The intensity of desire on the part of hundreds and 
 hundreds who have given up hope, to be encouraged, 
 to be told that there is yet a prospect for them, al¬ 
 though they have not where to lay their heads, is 
 greater than you imagine. You do not go down 
 into the lower strata of society. You sit before 
 your fender; you toast your moccasons there ; but 
 if you would stain them a little in the gutter, and 
 in the rough straw of the attics, and in the damp 
 mire of the cellars, where more and more of our pop¬ 
 ulation in cities are living, you would find yourselves 
 on the path followed by Him who went about from 
 house to house doing good. [Applause.] 
 
 THE LECTUKE. 
 
 At the Diet of Worms, Martin Luther, when re¬ 
 quested to recant, began the modern discussion of 
 conscience by saying, 44 Here I stand. I can do no 
 other. It is not safe for a man to violate his con- 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 211 
 
 science. God help me ! ” In these words, Protes¬ 
 tantism put her foot upon a piece of granite, which 
 modern scientific research is now convinced takes 
 hold on the core of the world. Theology, in that 
 speech of Luther’s, took its position upon self-evi¬ 
 dent truth in regard to the moral sense, and asserted 
 three things: — 
 
 1. That a man has conscience. 
 
 2. That God is in it. 
 
 3. That it is not safe to disobey a faculty through 
 which God looks, as of old he looked through the 
 Egyptian pillar of cloud and fire in the morning 
 watch, troubling the hosts of all dissent. 
 
 More and more fruitfully, since Luther’s day, 
 religious investigation has taken up the topic of 
 conscience from the point of view of the scientific 
 method. Bear with me, my friends, if, in discussing 
 conscience as the basis of the religion of science, I 
 take you over definitions which may appear at first 
 dry, but out of which, possibly, may germinate umbra¬ 
 geous foliage in which the very birds of heaven may 
 sing, and under which at last we, in the dust and 
 heat of these tempestuous days of debate, may sit 
 down in peace, and be refreshed. 
 
 1. Sensation and perception always co-exist. 
 
 2. Sensation involves perception first of the sensa¬ 
 tion or feeling itself, and second of an object caus¬ 
 ing the feeling. 
 
 3. The intensity of sensation and that of percep¬ 
 tion, when both are exercised at the same instant, 
 are in an inverse ratio to each other. 
 
212 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 4. These are the laws of touch, taste, sight, and all 
 the physical senses. 
 
 “Knowledge and feeling, perception and sensa¬ 
 tion,” says Sir William Hamilton (.Lectures on Meta¬ 
 physics, p. 336), “ though always co-existent, are 
 always in the inverse ratio of each other. That 
 these two elements are always found in co-existence, 
 is an old and notorious truth.” 
 
 It is sometimes asked how I can possibly define 
 conscience as both a perception and a sensation. 
 We perceive the difference between right and wrong 
 intentions. We feel that the right ought to he 
 chosen, and the wrong rejected, by the will. Both 
 these acts, I affirm, proceed from conscience. A 
 being incapable of either act we could not say has a 
 conscience ; and this proves that both the powers 
 must be named in any definition of conscience. But 
 here are two opposite activities, some say. Must not 
 conscience be either all intellectual or all emotional ? 
 Is it not all a perception or all a feeling ? What is 
 conscience in the last analysis, perceptive or emo¬ 
 tive? Suppose that you ask this question concern¬ 
 ing the sense of the ludicrous, or that of the beau¬ 
 tiful. Each of these plainly includes both percep¬ 
 tion and feeling, as does conscience. 
 
 5. The sense of the beautiful involves a perception 
 of the distinction between beauty and deformity, and 
 a feeling of delight in the one and of distaste for the 
 other. 
 
 6 . The sense of the right involves a perception of 
 the distinction between good and bad motives, and a 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 213 
 
 feeling of delight in the one and of distaste for the 
 other. 
 
 We must not confuse together conscience and 
 taste, the moral and the aesthetic, the sense of the 
 right and that of the beautiful; but there are most 
 subtle and significant resemblances between the laws 
 of these two faculties. I have some strange object 
 presented to me, and I perceive it, and I feel at once 
 that it is either ugly or beautiful. A crooked line, a 
 gnarled, jagged figure, is not as beautiful as a circle. 
 If you attack me here, I can only reply that these 
 are self-evident truths concerning beauty and taste. 
 I have a sensation; and connected with that sensa¬ 
 tion is a perception of beauty or deformity. The 
 sensation of your gnarled, jagged line gives me a 
 perception of what I call deformity, and the sensa¬ 
 tion of the circle gives me a perception of what I 
 call beauty. So too the sensation within my soul 
 of a motive which is not harmonious with all the 
 light I possess gives me the impression of moral 
 ugliness; and the sensation of a motive perfectly 
 conterminous and harmonious in all particulars with 
 the best illumination I possess or can obtain, gives me 
 an impression of moral beauty. Jonathan Edwards 
 described virtue as the love of right motives consid¬ 
 ered as morally beautiful, or as admiration for good¬ 
 ness as beauty of a spiritual sort. 
 
 T. The perception and feeling and love of aesthetic 
 beauty are pleasurable. 
 
 8 . The perfection and feeling and love of moral 
 beauty are blissful. 
 
214 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Thus the question as to whether the sense ol 
 right is feeling or perception is answered by atten- 
 tion to analogy and fact. Sensation implies percep¬ 
 tion. The sense of the beautiful includes both 
 perception and feeling. It is not proper to ask con¬ 
 cerning the sense of the beautiful or that of the ludi¬ 
 crous, whether it is intellectual or emotional. Each 
 is both; and the sensation involves the perception. 
 Just so the sense of right involves perception necessa¬ 
 rily. So, also, in my power of physical touch and 
 taste, sensations involve perception. 
 
 9. By physical sensation and the involved percep¬ 
 tion, we have a knowledge of physical realities out¬ 
 side of us. 
 
 10. By aesthetic sensation and the involved per¬ 
 ception, we have a knowledge of aesthetic realities 
 outside of us. 
 
 11. By moral sensation and the involved percep¬ 
 tion, we have a knowledge of moral realities outside 
 of us. 
 
 12. All the certainties of physical science depend 
 on the trustworthiness of the self-evident truths 
 visible to us in the perception which is involved in 
 physical feeling. 
 
 13. All the certainties of aesthetic science depend 
 on the trustworthiness of the self-evident truths vis¬ 
 ible to us in the perception involved in aesthetic feel¬ 
 ing. 
 
 14. All the certainties of moral science depend on 
 the trustworthiness of the self-evident truths visible 
 to us in the perception involved in moral feeling. 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 215 
 
 15. The three classes of certainties, — physical, 
 [esthetic, and moral, — as depending equally on self- 
 evident truths visible to us in perceptions involved 
 in natural sensations, are of equal degrees of author¬ 
 ity. 
 
 16. The ultimate tests of certainty in physical, 
 aesthetic, and moral science, are therefore the same in 
 kind. 
 
 When I take in my hands any physical object, I in 
 the first place feel it, and am conscious of the sensa¬ 
 tion ; in the second place, I am sure that something 
 is the cause of that sensation, and that the some¬ 
 thing is not myself. It is outside of me. There is 
 the beginning of the range of sensation. This feel¬ 
 ing involves perception, not of all the qualities in 
 the external object, but of the fact that there is an 
 external object. I do not know what is in a book by 
 touching it, but I know that I touch somewhat, and 
 that the somewhat is not myself. It is so in sight 
 and in hearing. I am conscious first of the affection 
 of my own personality, and then of a something 
 outside of myself causing that impression. I have 
 no control over the laws governing physical sen¬ 
 sation. 
 
 Just so, rising into the range of taste, I find that 
 the laws of beauty are not ordained by myself. I 
 see what I call ugliness, and I cannot help finding it 
 distasteful. I see what I call beauty, and I cannot 
 help having a delight in it. That law of distaste or 
 of delight is not subject to my will. It is above me. 
 I feel that it is something outside of me, and that it 
 
216 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 has authority in the universe without my consent. 
 
 It is one of the laws of things, just as much as the 
 law of gravitation. 
 
 We are all agreed up to this point. We have an 
 experience of sensation involving perception of the 
 law of physical gravitation. We do not know all 
 about it, but what little we do know concerning it is 
 sure as far as it goes. Just so I do not know all the 
 laws of the beautiful, but I know that there is a dis¬ 
 tinction between deformity and beauty, and that this 
 distinction is outside of me, and in the nature of 
 things. As by the evidence of the physical and aes¬ 
 thetic senses I find out that there is a physical law 
 of gravitation outside of me, and that there is a law of . 
 beauty outside of me, so, when I rise into the higher 
 faculties of the soul, I find that they have sensations, 
 and that their sensations involve perception, and that 
 yonder, in the loftiest part of the azure of the sky 
 within us, there are laws, just as surely as in this 
 mid-sky or the region of taste, and just as surely as 
 upon the earth on which we tread. Here are physi¬ 
 cal things — sensation involves perception; here are 
 sestlietical things — sensation involves perception ; 
 just so there are moral things, and sensation there, 
 as elsewhere, involves perception. Therefore if you 
 follow the scientific method based on the trustworthi¬ 
 ness of your sensations and the involved perceptions 
 in physical things, and follow the same method based 
 on the trustworthiness of your sensations and the 
 involved perceptions in sesthetical things, I will go 
 farther, and affirm in the name of the universality of 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 217 
 
 law precisely what you have affirmed over and over 
 again, namely, that sensation involves perception; 
 and I will apply this principle to moral as you have 
 to physical and sesthetic perception ; and thus I will 
 find in the upper sky a law by the scientific method, 
 just as we find one in the mid-sky and on the earth. 
 [Applause.] If objective reality is guaranteed by 
 a constant experience in the one case, it is in the 
 other. 
 
 17. We have a constant experience that our natures 
 are made on such a plan that we distinguish between 
 rightness and wrongness in motives. 
 
 18. We have a constant experience that we are 
 made on such a plan that we feel irresistibly that 
 we ought to follow right motives, and not follow 
 wrong. 
 
 19. We have a constant experience that pain or 
 bliss follow duty neglected or duty done. 
 
 20 . We have a constant experience that a sense of 
 an approval or disapproval higher than our own fol¬ 
 lows duty performed or duty disregarded. 
 
 21. We have a constant experience that our facul¬ 
 ties forebode our personal reward or punishment in 
 another state of existence, according as we do or do 
 not follow conscience. 
 
 22. The constant experience of moral sensation 
 and perception is as perfect a ground of certainty as 
 to moral law as a constant experience in sesthetic 
 sensation and perception is in regard to sesthetic law, 
 or as a constant experience in physical sensation and 
 perception is in regard to physical law. (See a fresh, 
 
218 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 keen book by Newman Smyth, The Fdiaious Feeling. 
 New York: 1877.) 
 
 It is a suggestive remark of Nitsch, the great Ger¬ 
 man theologian, that “ the religious consciousness 
 perfects and justifies itself, when, in the immediate 
 life of the spirit, what is contained in the original feel¬ 
 ing of God (Gottesgefiihl) objectifies itself in a con - 
 stant manner.” (>System der Christ . Lehre , p. 25.) 
 The far-reaching law that a constant experience is 
 the guaranty of all scientific certainty bears all the 
 tests applied to truth within the range of physical 
 investigation. Your Tyndall, your Huxley, your 
 Spencer, have in physical science no grounds of cer¬ 
 tainty that do not depend upon a uniform physical 
 experience. We have dreams, to be sure, in which 
 certain strange things occur to us; but the dreams 
 proceed according to laws which are not a constant 
 experience. We find that they lack verification in 
 other positions of our consciousness. We are not 
 always treated by the external world as we are in 
 dreams. But when we, as individual men, and wak¬ 
 ing, have a constant moral experience; when, age 
 after age, we as a race walk waking through all the 
 environments of history ; when age after age we walk 
 waking under all the winds that beat upon us from 
 out of the skies of moral truth; when we find Con¬ 
 stantly that there is a difference between right and 
 wrong, and that we feel we ought to follow good 
 motives, and not follow bad ; when constantly we are 
 beaten upon in the same way, — then these impres¬ 
 sions made upon us are revelatory of the moial plan, 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 219 
 
 not only of our natures but of our environment, and 
 the constancy of moral experience is to be looked on 
 as is the constancy of sesthetical and the constancy 
 of physical experience, as a source of scientific knowl¬ 
 edge. 
 
 Pardon me, my friends, if I say that modern seep 
 ticism appeals to Caesar, and to Caesar it shall go. 
 [Applause.] You believe, you say, and you adhere 
 unflinchingly to all self-evident propositions within 
 the range of physical research. Sir William Hamil¬ 
 ton and Kant and many another philosopher have 
 divided our faculties into the understanding and the 
 reason. By the reason, as understood by Kant, we 
 do not mean the understanding, but the faculty of per¬ 
 ceiving self-evident truth. Now, there are self-evident 
 truths in the range of morals as surely as in the 
 range of physics. Kant’s practical reason, or fac¬ 
 ulty by which we perceive self-evident truths of the 
 moral kind, is only another name for conscience, or 
 the moral sense. There are self-evident truths in 
 the range of aesthetics as surely as in the range of 
 morals. We have a faculty by which we perceive 
 self-evident truth ; or, rather, our whole nature is so 
 made that we cannot but believe self-evident propo¬ 
 sitions. Look for a moment at these different lists of 
 propositions. Take a few merely intellectual self- 
 evident truths, such as the geometrical and mathe¬ 
 matical axioms. We are all convinced, not merely 
 by evidence, but by self-evidence, that the whole is 
 greater than a part, and that two straight lines can¬ 
 not enclose a space, and that every change must have 
 
220 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 a cause. Just so in the range of aesthetics, although 
 the intuitions there never have been as carefully 
 studied as in the range of mathematics, we are sure that 
 there is a difference between beauty and deformity. 
 We do perceive by direct vision that a circle and an 
 ugly gnarled line are different, and that the one must 
 be put on the right hand and the other on the left 
 before any judgment-bar of taste. All men agree in 
 these feelings, and say the self-evident truth involved 
 in them is that there is a distinction between the 
 right hand and the left in every thing touched by 
 our sense .of the beautiful. But we rise into the 
 region of morals, and there is yet greater clearness 
 than in the region of taste. Here is an intellectual 
 axiom, you may say, but it is really a moral one : Sin 
 can be the quality of only voluntary action. There 
 is a perfectly self-evident moral truth. You cannot 
 prove it by any thing that does not assume it. It is 
 not only evident, but it is self-evident. It is a moral 
 axiom, and you are just as sure of it as that two and 
 two make four. Sin is free, or you cannot make sin 
 out of it. 
 
 Tyndall now publicly agrees with Hackel in main¬ 
 taining that the will is never free. Echoes are already 
 beginning to be heard, even in Boston, of his Bir¬ 
 mingham assertion that the robber, the ravisher, the 
 murderer, offend because they cannot help offending. 
 They are to be punished, indeed; but they are no 
 more blameworthy than honest men and reformers 
 and saints and martyrs are praiseworthy. In this 
 city I read in an editorial yet wet from the press the 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 221 
 
 assertion that the criminal offends because he cannot 
 help offending, and that such a doctrine permeating 
 society would free us from a large amount of theolo- 
 gical quackery. Will the teachers of this atrocious 
 shallowness insure the prisons against the effects of 
 their own quackery ? Will they lift off from trade 
 and social life the weight of this false science, which, 
 if trusted, will ride greed and fraud as never nightmare 
 rode invalid ? When the last word of the Hackelian 
 evolutionists, —opposing Darwin, opposing Dana, op¬ 
 posing Owen, opposing every anti-materialistic theory 
 of evolution in England or Germany, and all similar 
 schools in metaphysics, — is a denial that the will is 
 ever free, and an assertion that the murderer and the 
 robber and the ravisher offend because they cannot 
 help offending, it may be said with justice that the 
 materialistic cuttle-fishes are trying to attack the 
 leviathians of self-evident truth, by throwing off ink 
 into the sea ! They will succeed in making things 
 clear only when the sea is all of their own color. 
 
 If a man is to be loyal to axioms, if a thinker is 
 to require of himself consistency, if there is to be 
 clearness or straightforwardness in thought, we must 
 demand that the scientific method, rising thus from 
 the physical to the sesthetical, and into the moral, 
 shall hold fast to self-evident truth yonder, just as in 
 the mid-sky and on the sods of purely physical 
 research. I will not admit that the whole world be¬ 
 longs to the men who follow scientific truth only 
 in its physical relations. Heaven forbid that I should 
 deny that they are making important discoveries) 
 
222 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 They mine far into the earth, they sink wells down 
 and down; hut at the bottom of their wells, looking 
 upward, they do not see the whole range of truth. 
 It is important to recognize the merit of men who 
 sink wells into the earth; but if they, as specialists, 
 are to have sound minds, they must come often to 
 the curb-stone, and at least put th£ir heads out, and 
 gaze around, north, south, east, and west. (Smyth, 
 The Religious Feeling.') They will find the mid-sky a 
 fact, as well as the bowels of the planet; they will find 
 the upper sky a fact, as well as the mid-sky, and as well 
 as that inner vein which they have been working. We 
 are not out of the range of gravitation when we are 
 out of the physical specialists’ well. We are not out 
 of the range of self-evident truth when we rise out of 
 the mine, and look around us and above us. Forever 
 and forever, we must acknowledge the unity and the 
 universality of law; and therefore self-evident moral 
 truth will be to us always a pedestal from which the 
 philosophy of religion will be visible to its very tur¬ 
 ret, if only we carry up her telescope to that summit 
 along the line of the only rent through the clouds 
 that God’s own hand seems to have made when he 
 stretched forth his creating arm, and implanted these 
 self-evident truths in the human constitution. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 23. We know incontrovertibly, therefore, by a 
 constant experience of a moral law and of a Personal 
 Power not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, 
 that the plan of our natures, taken as a whole, and 
 the environment we have here and hereafter, require 
 us to choose what ought to be. 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 223 
 
 24. But to choose is to love. 
 
 25. To follow the plan of our natures, or con¬ 
 science, both in what it includes and in what it im 
 plies, we must therefore love a personal God, revealed 
 through the imperative commands of conscience, and 
 in the pains and blisses of our constant moral ex¬ 
 perience. 
 
 If any one scheme of philosophy now appears more 
 likely than another not to disappear, it is that of 
 which the fundamental thought is an ethical repre¬ 
 sentation of the universe. The philosophy of Lotze, 
 like that of Leibnitz and Plato, turns on the central 
 principle that the ends of the universe are moral. 
 One of Lotze’s profoundest sayings is : “ The world of 
 worths is the key to the world of forms.” This is the 
 deepest ethical teaching of your Julius Muller, and of 
 your Dorner, your Rothe, and your Ulrici, — that we 
 never understand any thing until we connect it with 
 the moral purpose had in view by the Author of all 
 things from the first. Study physical science only, and 
 perhaps you may be tempted to conclude, as Stuart 
 Mill did, either that God is limited in power, or that 
 there is a doubt of his goodness. But when we 
 turn from external nature to the moral law, revealed 
 by the scientific method; when we fasten our atten¬ 
 tion upon the great tendencies and influences which 
 are to give ethical causes supremacy, and make the 
 right victorious; when we remember, with Matthew 
 Arnold, that the Eternal Power which is outside of 
 us makes for righteousness, and makes imperatively 
 for it, and victoriously for it, — we see that the end is 
 
224 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 not jet; that the scheme of the universe is not fully 
 executed; that the perfection of the moral law proph¬ 
 esies the perfection of the ultimate arrangements of 
 things; and that, therefore, in conscience we have an 
 observatory higher than that of physical science ever 
 was, from which to gaze upon the supreme harmonies 
 of the universe. 
 
 He who enters into the depths of his conscience, 
 and there muses, pacing to and fro, is more likely to 
 meet God, and to understand the plan of the whole 
 universe, physical as well as moral, than he who 
 paces to and fro among the Seven Stars, or puts his 
 hand upon the sword-hilt of Orion, or flies with Cyg- 
 nus across the meridian, or follows Bootes as he 
 drives his hunting dogs over the zenith in a leash of 
 sidereal Are. He who fastens his attention on the 
 uppermost ranges of natural law will understand the 
 lower, into which the upper sink down with supreme 
 power. He who. gazes only upon the planets will 
 understand neither the planets nor the suns. Begin 
 with the loftiest that is known to us; take the scien¬ 
 tific method up into the constellations which in all 
 ages have had constant forms in the human inner sky; 
 study the sense of dependence and obligation which 
 point to a personal God, — and you will find that the 
 universe has everywhere an ethical tendency; you 
 will find that the ethical aim of all things is the jus¬ 
 tification of all things, and in conscience will discover 
 the Copernican system of the moral heavens. 
 
 “Love God,” writes Thomas Carlyle: “this is the 
 everlasting Yea in which all contradiction is solved, 
 
FOUNDATION OF THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 225 
 
 and in which whoso walks and works, it is well with 
 him.” (Sartor Resartus.') 
 
 Repetition of experiment! That is the scientific 
 test of deepest significance. Religious Science does 
 not flinch in the application of it. In that test she 
 finds all her victories. She asserts that there is a 
 Power that makes for righteousness, and points to all 
 history as a repetition of tests of that truth. She 
 asserts that conscience crowns whoever yields to its 
 demand of personal self-surrender to the moral law 
 and to the personal Lawgiver revealed through moral 
 sensation and perception. Her assertion she justifies 
 by repetitions of experiments in individual lives, age 
 after age. The more perfectly you adhere to experi¬ 
 ment, the more are you fortified in belief of all the 
 great truths concerning conscience. Who are these 
 sceptics who revere the scientific method, and are 
 unwilling to try experiment even once concerning 
 this upper realm of truth ? I assert that it is a fixed 
 natural law, that when the soul yields utterly to God 
 He streams into the spirit, gives a new sense of His 
 presence, and imparts a strength unknown before. 
 Will you try such self-surrender, and then will you 
 repeat the experiment as opportunity offers, — I care 
 not how often ? Every path of choice divides before 
 me. The right hand or the left I must take, and I 
 take the right. Immediately the path divides right 
 and left again. I take the right. Immediately it 
 divides. Every choice as to the path has a moral 
 character; and so either sin rolls up fast, or the habit 
 of virtue grows fast. Every day you put forth 
 
226 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 billions of choices, and in every choice there is a 
 moral motive. But now I affirm that in these billions 
 of opportunities for experiments, in these ten thou¬ 
 sand times ten thousand chances to test whether I am 
 right or wrong, you will not find one chance failing 
 to give you this verdict, that, if you yield utterly to 
 God, he will stream through you. Whenever your 
 conscience is made gladly supreme, its yoke, by ir¬ 
 resistible natural law, will transform itself into a 
 crown. This constant experience you will have at 
 every forking of the ways ; and so every forking will 
 be to you, if you choose to make it such, a repetition 
 of experiment, and a verification of the trustworthi¬ 
 ness of the scientific method applied to the innermost 
 holiest of the soul. Rising through that constant ex¬ 
 perience, we may, even in our present low estate, ap¬ 
 proach the bliss of the upper ranges of being, and of 
 those who never have sinned, and of that Nature 
 which was revealed on earth once, as the fulness of 
 Him who filleth all in all. His bliss is the brightness 
 of all infinities, and is symbolized to us by our own in¬ 
 tellectual, aesthetic, and moral gladness, when we are 
 right with a universe in which all law is one thought, 
 and that His own. It should be asserted by science 
 in the name of experiment, that man may become a 
 partaker of the Divine nature. Adjust the con¬ 
 science to the law it reveals, and He whose will the 
 law expresses will invariably produce in the soul the 
 largest measure it can receive of his own bliss and 
 strength. [Applause.] 
 
THE LAUGHTER OE THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 
 
 THE EIGHTY-NINTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY 
 LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 
 
 NOV. 26. 
 
O die Wunde des Gewissens wird keine Narbe, u id die Zeit 
 kiiblt sie nicbt mit ilirem Fliigel sondern halt sie bios offen mit ilirer 
 Senfe. — Richter: Titan, cycle Ixxxii. 
 
 N ofiog 6 (pvXaxOeic ovdtv kanv, f/ vo/aog, 
 
 & f&y fvXaxOelg nal vofiog ical drj/j.iog. 
 
 Menandeb: Ex Legislatore. 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT 
 
 ITSELF. 
 
 PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 t 
 
 Poor Jean Jacques Rousseau affirms in his Confess 
 sions, that the happiest instants of his entire career, 
 which ran, as you know, through unreportable villa- 
 nies and leprosies, were in an afternoon, when he was 
 yet virtuous, and met a company of young people, 
 themselves yet virtuous, and felt the strange power 
 of the pure atmosphere that comes into the world 
 with us, as he breathed it deeply in the height of 
 sociality. A thoroughly atheistic Frenchman, who 
 lived on the whole a life less cleanly than that of a 
 beast, said in his mature age that if he could have 
 known in his youth what kind of a time he was to 
 have, he would have hung himself. 
 
 There is in Boston a quarter which the sailors call 
 the Black Sea. Not every one there is as wise as 
 Rousseau, or as this atheistic Frenchman; but of 
 course Boston is as wise. On many a shore of the 
 ocean, seaports with Black Seas in them exist. 
 If Boston could once show her wisdom by making 
 
280 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 cleanly this one Black Sea, she would set an example 
 for all coasts. We draw near Thanksgiving morn¬ 
 ing, and have I not a right to speak of Magdalen 
 in cities? I know on what ground I am treading, 
 and that if any speaker slips here, there hangs over 
 him the crack of doom; but one purpose of this 
 lectureship is to discuss themes that cannot well be 
 noticed elsewhere. If you will bear with me, I must 
 say that Boston has as noble facilities as any city on 
 the globe for solving the problem of the manage¬ 
 ment of the corrupt and perishing classes in great 
 towns. More than half the population of this Com¬ 
 monwealth live in cities. Boston is not so painfully 
 under the control of a foreign-born vote as is the 
 metropolis at the mouth of the Hudson. In New 
 York two hundred thousand of the inhabitants were 
 born in Ireland, and one hundred and fifty thousand 
 in Germany. I know that New England, in its 
 manufacturing centres, is becoming New Ireland; 
 I know that Boston, within municipal limits, is 
 becoming an Irish city. But take Boston sleeping- 
 rooms into view, or the circuit of the fifty miles in 
 each direction in sight of the State House, and the 
 population within that space is as American and as 
 enlightened as that in any other quarter of equal 
 size on the globe. Property is more equally diffused 
 here than in any other section of equal extent; and 
 so are intelligence and virtue. I know what large 
 claims these are, but I am not a citizen of Massachu¬ 
 setts by birth. I am proud of my native State, New 
 York, with the great Sound and the gates of the 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUI AT ITSELF. 231 
 
 ocean at one corner of its wide territory, tlie Adiron- 
 dacks at another, and the eternal roar of Niagara at 
 a third. But you have opportunity here, which 
 New York may never possess, to wash a desolate city 
 quarter white, or at least gray. If you do not 
 improve the opportunity, the time will come when 
 even Beacon Hill will be aware of the presence of 
 the Black Sea in this municipality. The two quar¬ 
 ters are not far apart, a small fraction of a mile, and 
 yet they are not acquainted with each other. In 
 many seaports of the world the Black Sea and the 
 Beacon Hill exist, but they rarely understand each 
 other. Is it not time, now that God is massing men 
 in great towns, and especially in seaports, for Ameri¬ 
 cans who claim to have political ingenuity and moral 
 enthusiasm, to ask whether there can be a noose 
 made that will throttle the enemies of Magdalen ? 
 
 What can be done for Magdalen in cities ? Seven 
 things. 
 
 1. Visitation of the degraded is possible to women. 
 
 This remedy of personal intercourse with those 
 who have gone down beyond the lowermost round 
 of the ladder that leads into society is a two-edged 
 method of action. In the first place, it teaches the 
 haughty and the luxurious who go down there that 
 life is not all of the smooth sort, and that really, in 
 this nineteenth century, and to the last hour of the 
 unrolling ages, there are places into which men can¬ 
 not venture safely, and especially not women. In 
 ull velvet society we need to be taught that between 
 the right hand and the left there is a difference abso« 
 
232 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 lutely infinite. The chief merit of the measure of 
 personal visitation is in its reflex action upon a luxu 
 rious, soft, hammock-swung, lavender Christianity. 
 
 You have here in the North End, close under your 
 windows, children that are born cherubic, possibly, 
 but who grow impish very fast. They are elbowed 
 by the dance-hall. They look out of their cradles 
 into brothels. Behind their nursery windows stand 
 the reeking stables. Up and down the gutters stag¬ 
 ger and fight men whom drink has made demons. 
 They curse each other in the hearing of the young 
 ears. Women whom drink has made furies preside 
 at many cradles. Sottish and leprous parents ought 
 to perish, you think; but what of their children ? 
 The shiftlessness of the Portuguese and the Italians 
 and the Irish, and the nineteen other nationalities who 
 are represented in that Black Sea, deserves the spur 
 of hunger, you say. But are the children to blame 
 for being there ? Have they not a right to a perma¬ 
 nent place in your pity? Surely they did not choose 
 the spot in which they should come into the world. 
 After all that we say haughtily about letting vice 
 take its own course, we must remember that children 
 start weighted in the race of life, and that we our¬ 
 selves put upon them some of the weights if we 
 allow these desolate quarters to go without religious, 
 social, and financial visitation. 
 
 2. - The opening of homes for the degraded is 
 possible. 
 
 3. The sending of the reformed out on demand 
 into families is possible. 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 233 
 
 You believe in experience. I hold in my hands 
 official statements which are authorized by some of 
 the noblest signatures in the city, and which I might 
 justify by giving names. On the authority of these 
 statements I assure you that it is a fact that some 
 graduates of homes for the fallen are now members 
 in good standing in Christian churches in this city 
 and vicinity. It is a fact that several of them have 
 so comported themselves in the households where 
 they have been placed, that intelligent clergymen 
 and clear-sighted matrons have written in the high¬ 
 est commendation of them. It is a fact that some 
 have scarcely wavered for ten years, and that then 
 the open bars of our city were the pitfalls which 
 caused the temptation. It is a fact that at least one 
 of the homes which these official authorities repre¬ 
 sent has had more demands for graduates from it than 
 it could supply. I am speaking of the Mount Hope 
 Home, if you will have me be definite, in charge of 
 the North End Mission — no sectarian enterprise. I 
 do not underrate the numerous priceless denomina¬ 
 tional enterprises in this Black Sea. I speak for 
 them all in speaking for the North End Mission, 
 which is aided by all denominations. This home, 
 supported by that mission, is a staircase up which 
 degraded persons have ascended, — helped by the 
 angels, no doubt, — and have reached the highest 
 standing-place in some cases; have had opportunity 
 to offer themselves to God; have escaped from the 
 Gehennas of this life. And now there is a bar across 
 that staircase! What is it made by ? I look at it 
 
234 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 with amazement. I can hardly believe it is a bar 
 any thing but the vapor of the harbor. I can hardly 
 believe it is any barrier to the ascent of these de¬ 
 graded ones to a life of reformation. I come nearer 
 to that bar. I look. There is an inscription on it. 
 What is it? “Shut for want of funds.” And un¬ 
 derneath is written “ Boston ” — is it “ Boston penu¬ 
 riousness,” or “ Boston carelessness ” ? There is a 
 fog there; I will not try to read the inscription: it 
 is one or the other. [Applause.] 
 
 You are setting an example, are you, foi all the 
 seaports of the world ? When official testimony of 
 this kind is put before you; when little Boston, 
 easily managed, if men make up their minds to do 
 their duty, is thus in a strategic position among 
 American cities; when New York and San Fran¬ 
 cisco and New Orleans, and Liverpool, and Lisbon, 
 and Naples, and all the Black Seas the world around, 
 are each throwing up to the sky a glance like a 
 gleam of light out of a serpent’s eye, and you are 
 asked here to put out one of those eyes once for all, 
 and change one Black Sea into a sweet pool of 
 waters, you fold your hands; you say that these 
 things must take care of themselves, and that the 
 whole problem perhaps is insoluble. And yet those 
 who go down into these dark waters, men who have 
 made specialists of themselves there, and some of 
 them are highly educated, assure you that nothing 
 is needed but financial and moral support to secure 
 again and again a passage up that now blocked stair¬ 
 case for those whose feet and bodies and whole form 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 235 
 
 to above the lips — they cannot call out, they have no 
 voice, and I give them what little voice I have — are 
 submerged. You say these men are wild; but they 
 say that those who are sunk even beyond the lips 
 and even beyond the eyes, and cannot see their own 
 condition, may emerge, and put on white robes. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 4. There may be execution of law against houses 
 of death. 
 
 You vote for mayors and aldermen; you have 
 serious views as to how this city ought to be man¬ 
 aged. You are intending to reform it by a paper 
 constitution by and by. You are determined to have 
 a responsible mayor in this city. The lack of an 
 executive that can be brought to justice is, indeed, 
 the chief deficiency in our municipal governments 
 throughout the United States. But the people are 
 mayors; the people are aldermen. The careless vot¬ 
 ing of American cities, when attempts are made to 
 avoid the execution of the law, is something that 
 ought to make the statues of the fathers here in 
 Boston leap from their pedestals. 
 
 5. There may be laws to hold men to as stern an 
 accountability as women on the public streets. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] 
 
 6. The temperance laws may be executed. 
 
 7. The German social standards in pagan days 
 may be revived. 
 
 What does Tacitus say of our fathers, when, 
 nnder the German forests, they were first brought 
 within range of the historic telescope ? They were 
 
236 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 monogamists. The love of home was one source of 
 the patriotism of the Teutonic tribes. The Romans 
 never conquered our fathers. Is the love of home 
 likely to be undermined among Anglo-Saxons ? Did 
 you read Herbert Spencer’s Sociology ? Did you not 
 find him turning all the light of advanced thought 
 upon the question which lies at the centre of social 
 life; and justifying, in the name of philosophy of the 
 freest sort, the soundest ideas on that theme ? Per¬ 
 haps, if you will be as anxious as Spencer is, to under¬ 
 stand natural law, you will agree with him thoroughly 
 in his organizing and redemptive conclusions con¬ 
 cerning sociology. You know that I am not a eulogist 
 of Spencer in general; but he has said lately a few 
 things which look wiser than his earlier declarations. 
 (Spencer, Principles of Sociology , 1876, vol. i., part 
 iii.) The truth is, that the family is more and more 
 J put in peril by the advance of luxury in civilization 
 and by the massing of men in cities, and by a leprous 
 philosophy that holds that man is never to blame, 
 whatever he does. Are we to sit still, and have that 
 doctrine taught ? Are we to let the trail of that ser¬ 
 pent drag itself over the leaves of the vines that 
 cluster on the trellis-work of our homes ? Herbert 
 Spencer sends out no such creeping worm of the 
 Nile into social life. Materialistic philosophers have 
 done so lately. 
 
 There are many Saxon faces in this audience. 
 The blue eyes, the white forehead, the blonde cheek, 
 the fair hair, are signs of the Anglo-Saxon lineage. 
 That race rules the world to-day. It may not always 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 287 
 
 rule it. It rules it for a cause. That race has given 
 co us Goethe and Milton and Shakspeare; and Bacon 
 and Kant and Hamilton and Edwards; and Crom¬ 
 well and Washington and Lincoln. It wrote Magna 
 Charta, the English Constitution, the Declaration of 
 Independence, the Constitution of the United States. 
 It has bridged the ocean with its commerce, and 
 traversed it with its electric wires. That race, in its 
 German forests, was noted for nothing so much as 
 the spotlessness of its private morals. While yet 
 barbarian, our German fathers, as the Roman histo¬ 
 rians state, buried the adulterer alive in the mud. 
 The adulteress they whipped through the streets. 
 “ Non forma” says Tacitus, 44 non cetate , non opibus , 
 maritum invenerit .” 44 Neither beauty, nor youth, 
 
 nor wealth, found her a husband. They considered,” 
 Tacitus says, 44 that there was something divine in 
 woman, and that presaged the future; and they did 
 not scorn her counsel and responses.” Youth were 
 taught chivalric notions of honor. Out of this race 
 sprang chivalry. It is this race which has proved 
 itself, in the hurtling contests of a thousand years, 
 both in peace and war, superior to all relaxed Italian 
 and French tribes as the leader of all the world’s 
 civilization. The purity of the tribes in the German 
 forests prophesied their future. The hiding of the 
 power of the Anglo-Saxon race has been in the fact 
 that it was at the first free from the sin of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah. That race is passing the trial of power. 
 It is passing the trial of luxury. In the German 
 wilds our fathers, as the Romans found them, were, 
 
238 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 as a race, as pure as the dews the forests shook upon 
 their heads. The race has predominated in history, 
 because free, even when barbarian, from what else¬ 
 where has been the commonest leprosy of barbarism. 
 It will continue to predominate if it continues free. 
 If the Anglo-Saxon race has shown exceptional vigor, 
 the chief secret of its power is to be found in its rev¬ 
 erence for a pure family life. [Applause.] It will 
 continue to have power, and rule the world, if it con¬ 
 tinues that pure life; otherwise, not. [Applause.] 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 The innermost laughter of the soul at itself, it 
 rarely hears more than once without hearing it for¬ 
 ever. What is the laughter of the soul at itself? Do 
 you not know, and do you wish me to describe, 
 this convulsion of irony, of fear, it may be of despair, 
 which sends cold shivers through all our nerves, 
 causes a strange perspiration to stand on our fore¬ 
 heads, and makes us quail, even when alone — as we 
 never are? You would call me a partisan, if I were 
 to describe an internal burst of laughter of conscience 
 at the soul. Therefore let Shakspeare, let Richter, 
 let Victor Hugo, let cool secular history, put before 
 us the facts of human nature. 
 
 Here is Jean Valjean, principal character in 
 Hugo’s Les Miserables , one of the six best works of 
 fiction the last century has produced. Hugo is no 
 theologian. He is not even a partisan teacher of 
 ethics. He is a Frenchman. His ideals have been 
 obtained largely from Paris. But you open his 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 239 
 
 chapter entitled “ A Tempest in a Brain,” and yon 
 find him asserting that “ there is a spectacle grander 
 than the ocean, and that is the conscience. There is 
 a spectacle grander than the sky, and it is the inte¬ 
 rior of the soul. To write the poem of the human 
 conscience, were the subject only one man, and he 
 the lowest of men, would be reducing all epic poems 
 into one supreme and final epos. ... It is no more 
 possible to prevent thought from reverting to an ideal 
 than the sea from returning to the shore. With the 
 sailor this is called the tide. With the culprit it is 
 called remorse. God heaves the soul like the ocean.” 
 Elsewhere this modern Frenchman writes: “ Let us 
 take nothing away from the human mind. Suppres¬ 
 sion is evil. Certain faculties of man are directed 
 towards the Unknown. The Unknown is an ocean. 
 What is conscience ? The compass of the Unknown.” 
 (.Les Miserables , chapter entitled “ Parenthesis.”) 
 
 Yaljean here has been in the galleys. He has 
 escaped, assumed another name, and has become the 
 mayor of a thriving French town. In his business 
 he acquires the respect of all who know him. But 
 one day, an old man who has stolen a bough of 
 apples, and who looks like Jean Yaljean, is arrested 
 as Yaljean himself, and is in danger of being con¬ 
 demned to the galleys for life. There is a striking 
 resemblance between the faces of the two men. The 
 true Yaljean is brought face to face with the ques¬ 
 tion whether he will confess his identity, or allow 
 another man to go to the galleys in his place. Yal¬ 
 jean has tried to recover his character. A bishop, 
 
240 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 who taught him religious truth, seems to hover in 
 the air over him. A couple of golden candlesticks 
 which the bishop gave him, he treasures as posses¬ 
 sions priceless for their reminiscences. He goes to 
 his room; shuts himself in; and, as Victor Hugo 
 affirms, he was not alone, although no other man 
 was there. Valjean meditates on his duty, and his 
 mind becomes weary under the tempest of conflict¬ 
 ing motives. Shall he go back to the galleys? 
 Shall he be whipped up the side of the hulks every 
 night in loathsome company ? Shall he feel the iron 
 on his ankles and on his wrists? Shall he hear 
 nothing but obscenity and profanity the livelong, 
 hard-working day? Shall he give up the opportu¬ 
 nity of being a benefactor to a wide circle of the 
 poor? Ought he not to make money, that he may 
 give it away? We have forgers who ask that ques¬ 
 tion. [Laughter.] It is said that some men have 
 thought it a convenient modern trick in trade, to 
 endeavor to persuade one’s self that the infinite 
 weight of the word ought lies on the side of philan¬ 
 thropic forgery. But Victor Hugo does not repre¬ 
 sent Jean Valjean as of that opinion. In spite of all 
 the temptations found on that side, Valjean at last 
 concludes that it is his duty to declare his identity, 
 and save this Champmathieu from the galleys. 
 
 But then, as you remember, there comes another 
 thought to Valjean. Fantine, a ward of his, and her 
 child Cosette, depend on him exclusively. The 
 mother has suffered nearly every thing, and deserved 
 to suffer much, but without Valjean her life and that 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 241 
 
 of her child will be a ruin. “ Is it not,” he asks, “ a 
 clear case that this old man, who has but a few years 
 to live, is worth less than these two young lives ? ” 
 Throwing himself out of the case, Valjean must 
 leave either him or them to fate. Reasoning thus, 
 he at last adds his former selfish temptations to these 
 unselfish ones. He remembers his duties to himself 
 and his duties as a benefactor. He sums them all 
 up; and says that, after all, nobody knows that he 
 is Jean Valjean. He has only to let Providence 
 take its course. God has decided for him. He 
 makes up his mind not to declare himself. u Just 
 there,” Victor Hugo says, “he heard an internal 
 burst of laughter.” Hugo affirms that a man never 
 hears the deepest laughter of this kind more than 
 once, without hearing it during his whole existence, 
 here and hereafter. 
 
 Valjean, however, persists in his resolution not to 
 declare himself. He repeats his reasoning in self¬ 
 justification; he thinks that he speaks from the 
 depths of his conscience; “but still h q felt no joy ” 
 This sign of self-deception does not induce him to 
 pause. He takes down his old galley suit, burns it; 
 finds the thorn stick, with its iron-pointed ends, 
 which he had used when a vagabond, burns that; 
 gazes on a coin which he robbed from a boy, puts 
 that in the fire; and finally he prepares to destroy 
 the two golden candlesticks, which years before were 
 given him by the bishop, who now seems to be in 
 the air at his side, not able to face him quite, but 
 whispering behind his ear. He takes these candle 
 
242 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 sticks, bends over the fire, almost stupefied by the 
 violence of his emotions; warms himself at the crack¬ 
 ling flames; throws them in — “ Valjean! ” He looks 
 up, and there is no one present. There was some one 
 there, Hugo says, but He was not of those whom the 
 human eye can see. “ Do this,” continued the voice, 
 which had been at first faint, and spoke from the ob¬ 
 scurest nook of his conscience, and which had gradu¬ 
 ally become sonorous and formidable, and seemed to 
 be outside of him: “ put into the flames all that sug¬ 
 gests reminiscences of the devout sort. Make your¬ 
 self a mask if you please; but, although man sees 
 your mask, God will see your face; although your 
 neighbors see your life, God will see your con¬ 
 science.” And again came the internal burst of 
 laughter: “ That is excellently arranged, you scoun¬ 
 drel ! ” 
 
 Midnight struck. Valjean heard two clocks. He 
 compared the notes, and he was reminded that he 
 had seen a few days before, in a shop, a bell having 
 on it the name Romainville. Hugo is a subtle poet. 
 He says much between the lines. Suddenly Valjean 
 remembered, says Hugo, “that Romainville is a 
 little wood near Paris, where lovers go to pick lilacs 
 in April.” Valjean falls asleep, and has a dream. 
 He is near Romainville, but all the houses are of 
 ashen color; all the landscape is treeless and ashen ; 
 the very sky is of leaden hue. He enters Romain¬ 
 ville, where the lilacs grow that the lovers pick in 
 April, — deep allegory this, by a Frenchman, no par¬ 
 tisan, no theologian, — and around a corner where 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 243 
 
 two streets meet, lie sees a man leaning against the 
 wall. “Why is this city so silent?” The man 
 makes no reply. Valjean enters a house. The first 
 room is empty; in the second room, behind the door, 
 he finds in his dream another silent man, leaning 
 against the wall. He asks him why the house is 
 deserted, but no reply is given; and all the walls 
 are ashen color, and the sky continues to be leaden. 
 He wanders into house after house. He finds a 
 fountain bursting up in a garden, and behind a tree 
 a man, but he too is silent. There was behind every 
 corner, every door, and every tree, a man standing 
 silently. Before entering Romainville, he met on 
 the plain near the city a horseman, “perfectly 
 naked,” — Hugo writes, and he knows what he 
 means,— and with a skull instead of a head, but yet 
 the veins were throbbing around the skull; and in his 
 hand there was a wand, supple as any grape-vine, 
 yet firm and heavy as lead. With that wand this 
 horseman was to chastise the inhabitants of this 
 city. Valjean, in his dream, went out of the lifeless 
 town in horror, and, looking back, he saw all its in¬ 
 habitants coming after him. They saluted him on 
 the open plain, under the leaden sky, and this was 
 their language : “ Do you not knoiv that you have been 
 dead for a long while ? ” Men who have heard the 
 internal burst of laughter as forgers, as lepers, as 
 those who dare not open their souls to their neigh¬ 
 bors, find behind the doors and in the booths, and 
 even on the street-corners, silent men; and when 
 these criminals, known to God under their masks, 
 
244 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 walk into solitude, those silent; men come after them, 
 and, when once conscience has been finally insulted, 
 the cry of all the nature of things is represented by 
 the inhabitants of Romainville in Victor Hugo’s 
 dream. Instead of lilacs in April, you have the 
 leaden sky; you have all the earth dun-color; you 
 have a brazen sod on which to stand; you have this 
 horseman, with the whip lithe as a grape-vine and 
 heavy as lead, before you; and behind you this host 
 with the cry, “ Do you not know that you have been 
 dead a long while ? ” [Applause.] 
 
 Valjean finally confessed his identity; and the 
 court and audience, when he uttered the words, “ I 
 am Jean Valjean,” “felt dazzled in their hearts,” 
 Hugo says, “and that a great light was shining 
 before them.” [Applause.] 
 
 Take Richter’s Titan, another of the six greatest 
 works of fiction the last century has given to the 
 world, and perhaps the greatest of them all. Ro- 
 quairol, the fiend of the book, dies by suicide. He 
 utters no words which the Titanic Richter, no par¬ 
 tisan, no theologian, does not put into his mouth. 
 Richter’s human horologes have crystal dial-plates 
 and transparent walls which allow us to see the 
 mechanism within. More than once this Roquai- 
 rol has heard the laughter of his soul at itself. 
 “ I cannot repent,” says the leper, with his pistol at 
 his own brain. “ Should that which time has washed 
 away from this shore cleave again to the shore of 
 eternity, then it must fare badly with me there. I 
 can change there as little as here. I do verily pun 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 245 
 
 ish myself, and God immediately judges me.” Here 
 he suddenly points the weapon at his forehead, fires, 
 and falls headlong; blood flows from the cloven 
 skull; he breathes once, and then no more. Albano, 
 tlie serene, vast soul which represents Richter’s 
 views of conscience, stands at the side of the corpse, 
 and seems to hear the words from the suicide’s breast 
 and iron mouth, “ Be still: I am judged.” (Titan, 
 Cycle, 130.) 
 
 But, you say William Shakspeare would not be 
 as' melodramatic as this Frenchman Hugo, nor as 
 serious as this German Richter. He was an English¬ 
 man. Although Tennyson has lately praised Hugo 
 in a sonnet, and although Mrs. Browning has said 
 that Dickens learned to write fiction from Hugo 
 (Letters of Mrs. Browning, vol. ii.), you will follow 
 no French authorities as to conscience. John Cal¬ 
 vin was a Frenchman [applause], and did not teach 
 fatalism either. [Applause.] Shakspeare more than 
 once has represented the despair of the soul under 
 the law of its own nature : — 
 
 “ Oh, ray offence is rank, it smells to heaven! 
 
 It hath the primal eldest curse upon it, 
 
 A brother’s murder. Pray can I not, 
 
 Though inclination be as sharp as will: 
 
 My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent. 
 
 • • • • ' • • • • • 
 
 In the corrupted currents of this world, 
 
 Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, 
 
 And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself 
 Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above *, 
 
 There is no shuffling, there the action lies 
 
246 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, 
 
 Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults 
 To give in evidence. What then ? What rests? 
 
 Try what repentance can : what can it not? 
 
 Yet what can it when one cannot repent? 
 
 O wretched state! O bosom black as death ! 
 
 O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, 
 
 Art more engaged 1 Help, angels! Make assay ! 
 
 Bow, stubborn knees 1 ” 
 
 Hamlet, act iii. sc. 3. 
 
 And they cannot! But the knees that cannc t 
 bend are in presence of the hosts of which Hugo 
 speaks. The knees that cannot bend are dead. Is 
 the deepest final laughter of the soul at itself a 
 laughter from which it can flee? In the next life 
 shall we escape these internal bursts of laughter from 
 conscience ? Not unless the soul can escape from itself. 
 While we continue to be spiritual individualities, we 
 must keep company with the plan of our natures; and 
 this plan is expressed in that allegory of Romainville, 
 lilacs in April, and the question from the half-head¬ 
 less host, “Do you not know that you have been 
 dead a long time ? ” 
 
 There is in conscience, Bishop Butler says, a pro- 
 ] phetic oflice; and it is to be regretted that the fore¬ 
 most Christian apologist of the late centuries did 
 not develop this stupendous thought, which he only 
 suggests in his famous sermons. “ Conscience, with¬ 
 out being consulted,” Butler says, “ magisterially 
 exerts itself, and, if not forcibly stopped, naturally 
 and always of course goes on to anticipate a higher 
 and more effectual sentence, which shall hereafter 
 
THE LAUGHTER OP THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 247 
 
 second and affirm its own. But this part of the 
 office of conscience,” continues Butler, “is beyond 
 my present design explicitly to consider.” (Upon 
 Human Nature , Ser. 11.) Now, precisely where 
 Butler paused in his consideration of the prophetic 
 office of conscience, Shakspeare seems to have be¬ 
 gun : — 
 
 “ To be, or not to be,—that is the question. 
 
 To die, to sleep; 
 
 To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub. 
 
 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
 
 Must give us pause. 
 
 The dread of something after death,— 
 
 The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns, — puzzles the will, 
 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 Than fly to others that we know not of. 
 
 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” 
 
 Hamlet , act iii., sc. 1. 
 
 You say that Shakspeare is here speaking poet¬ 
 ically? But again and again he utters the same 
 thought. You remember Clarence’s dream: — 
 
 “ My dream was lengthened after life. 
 
 Oh I then began the tempest to my soul, 
 
 Who passed, methought, the melancholy flood, 
 
 With that grim ferryman the poets write of, 
 
 Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. 
 
 The first that there did greet my stranger soul 
 Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick, 
 
 Who cried aloud, ‘ What scourge for perjury 
 
248 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence ? * 
 
 And so he vanished ; then came wandering by 
 A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 
 Dabbled in blood; and he squeaked out aloud, — 
 
 ‘ Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, 
 That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury. 
 
 Seize on him, Furies ! take him to your torments ! * 
 With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends 
 Environed me about, and howled in mine ears 
 Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, 
 
 I, trembling, waked, and for a season after 
 Could not believe but that I was in hell.” 
 
 King Richard III., act i. sc. 4. 
 
 The internal burst of laughter! Shakspeare knew 
 what it was in its earlier smiles, or he could not have 
 written these passages concerning souls that seem to 
 have heard that laughter in its deepest final tones. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 Out of the multitude of historical examples of the 
 laughter of the soul at itself, take only two. There 
 is Charles IX. of France. He consented to the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew. He is dying. He is 
 twenty-four years of age. He is in such an agony of 
 remorse that the historians say there is documentary 
 evidence of the fact that he sweat blood. Not only 
 did the blood pour out of nostrils and the corners of 
 the eyes, but in many places through the corrugated 
 veins did the blood ooze. That is history, and not 
 poetry. He recalled the massacre of St. Bartholo¬ 
 mew, to which he had assented. “ How many mur¬ 
 ders ! what rivers of blood! ” and he went hence, as 
 Clarence went out of his dream. “ Quelle preuve,” 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 249 
 
 adds a French historian to his narrative of this scene 
 (Duruy, Histoire de France , tome 2, p. 120), “ de 
 Timpuissance du crime a tromper la conscience du 
 coupable! ” You say that this is a very penetrating 
 gleam into the recesses of natural law, if it be a fact. 
 You know that facts of this kind are numerous in 
 history; and no philosophy is sound that does not 
 match itself to all the facts of its field. The blisses 
 and pains of conscience ! We know the pains better 
 than the blisses; but the nature of things weighs as 
 much for us as it does against us. The weight of 
 the word ought is as great when it is against us, as 
 it is when it is for us. 
 
 John Randolph fought a duel with Henry Clay. 
 He walks into the senate-chamber, staggering in his 
 last illness. Mr. Clay is rising to speak. The two 
 men have not addressed each other for months. 
 “ Lift me up,” says Randolph, loud enough for Clay 
 to hear him: “ I must listen to that voice once 
 more.” He was lifted up; Clay finished his speech; 
 and the men shook hands, and parted almost friends. 
 Randolph was taken to Philadelphia, and his biogra¬ 
 pher (Life of Randolph , vol. ii., last chapter) — I am 
 citing no newspaper clamor — affirms that on his 
 death-bed he asked his physician to show him the 
 word remorse in the dictionary. “ There is no dic¬ 
 tionary in the room,” says the physician. “ Very well: 
 here is a card. The name of John Randolph is on one 
 side of it: write on the other the word which best 
 symbolizes his soul. Write remorse in large letters; 
 underscore the word.” After that was done, Ran- 
 
250 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 dolph lifted lip the card before his eyes, and repeated 
 in a loud voice, three times, “ Remorse, remorse, 
 remorse ! ” — “ What shall we do with the card ? ” says 
 the physician. “ Put it in your pocket, and when I 
 am dead look at it.” You say Randolph was insane. 
 After all these acts he dictated his will, manumitting 
 bis slaves; and at that day such a will could not be 
 drawn, except by an acute and clear head. It was 
 technically perfect. u You know nothing of re- 
 morse,” said John Randolph, no theologian, no par¬ 
 tisan, a man of the world. “ I hope I have looked 
 to Almighty God as a Saviour, and obtained some 
 relief; but when I am dead look at the word which 
 utters the inmost of my soul, and you will under¬ 
 stand of what human nature is capable.” Pie had 
 heard the internal burst of laughter, although per¬ 
 haps not in its deepest tones. 
 
 To summarize now what these examples prove: — 
 
 1. There is an Eternal Power, not ourselves, which 
 makes for righteousness. 
 
 2. An entire agreement exists between conscience 
 and the issues of things. 
 
 3. Our consciences are thus in harmony with that 
 Power. 
 
 4. We are compelled to judge ourselves according 
 to the moral ideals authorized by this Eternal Power, 
 not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. 
 
 5. We cannot escape from this Power. 
 
 6. Vv^e must be in either harmony or dissonance 
 with it. 
 
 7. If in dissonance with it, we must bear the pains 
 
THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL AT ITSELF. 251 
 
 which are the inevitable penalties of such disso¬ 
 nance. 
 
 8. Conscience thus makes cowards of us all. 
 
 9. It does so not only by the fear of moral penalty 
 in this life, but by the fear of something after death. 
 
 10. The constitutional fear of “ something after 
 death,” of which Shakspeare and Butler speak, is a 
 proof that there is something there. 
 
 11. While the prophetic action of conscience 
 thus intensifies all the pains of conscience, it may 
 also intensify all its blisses. 
 
 12. It is true, on the one hand, that the innermost 
 laughter of the soul at itself, it rarely hears more 
 than once without hearing it forever. 
 
 13. It is true, on the other, that the innermost ben¬ 
 ediction of the soul upon itself, it rarely hears more 
 than once without hearing it forever. 
 
 14. The innermost laughter and the innermost 
 benediction come from the depth of conscience. 
 
 15. But the weight of the word ought is a revela¬ 
 tion of the nature of things. 
 
 16. The nature of things is only another name for 
 the Divine Nature. 
 
 17. The laughter of the soul and the benediction 
 of the soul as to itself, in the innermost of con¬ 
 science, are the laughter and benediction of the 
 nature of things; that is, the benediction and the 
 laughter of the Lord. [Applause.] 
 
 18. The laughter of the soul at itself is a laughter 
 from which it cannot flee. 
 

 
 ■X 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
X. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 THE NINETIETH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURE* 
 SHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, DEC. 3. 
 
He who resolveth to do every duty, is immediately conscious of 
 She presence of the gods. — Bacon. 
 
 Stern lawgiver I yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead’s most benignant grace; 
 
 Nor know we any thing so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face; 
 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads; 
 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
 
 And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong. 
 
 Wobdswobth: Ode to Duty 
 
X. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 PRELUDE OX CURRENT EVENTS. 
 
 Sometimes in ancient Athens, previous to elec¬ 
 tions, the streets were swept with a vermilion-col¬ 
 ored cord. In the assemblies which Demosthenes ad¬ 
 dressed at the Pynx, no important law could be 
 passed unless six thousand votes in its favor were 
 deposited in the urns. To secure an audience of the 
 necessary size, servants of the state were sent through 
 the market-place with a rope chalked red; and who¬ 
 ever received a stain on his toga, as that never-loiter¬ 
 ing line, stretched from side to side of the streets, 
 passed along the crowded ways, was fined as an 
 enemy of the state. Charles Sumner often affirmed 
 that the citizen who neglects his political duties is 
 a public enemy. A law of Pythagoras pronounced 
 every free man infamous who in questions of public 
 moment did not take sides. Compulsory voting was 
 the rule in ancient Athens; and one could almost 
 wish that it were in modern America. We should 
 be imitating the Athenians if we were to double the 
 poll-tax of all who can vote and do not. 
 
 255 
 
256 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Athenian scholars like President Seelye and Presi¬ 
 dent Chadbourne are not lowering their dignity at 
 all by endeavoring to teach us through their personal 
 example the mission of the scholar in politics. [Ap¬ 
 plause.] They take no partisan stand, but simply a 
 patriotic one. Assuredly terror would blanch the 
 cheeks of political corruption if such examples could 
 be followed as widely as they are already honored. 
 Our fathers taught, and so have an hundred years of 
 American history, that eternal vigilance, and not 
 merely endless grumbling and sour grimace on the 
 part of culture, is the price of liberty. How utterly 
 has the mood of scholarly patriotism changed in the 
 last fifty or eighty years! A citizen of Brooklyn, 
 not long ago, said to me that he supposed that of 
 course the mayor of Boston speaks Latin. In the 
 old days we were jealous of our rights on these three 
 hills. But now that a foreign-born population has 
 taken an honored place at the ballot-box, — a posi¬ 
 tion from which we do not wish to drive them at all, 
 — some of us are too lofty to ask any favors of them 
 unless they first will ask favors of us by putting our 
 names in nomination. If the foreign-born vote, if 
 half-educated suffrage, if that part of our population 
 which Lord Beaconsfield would say is unfit in many 
 particulars for citizenship, will ask our permission 
 and come to us and burn sufficient incense, perhaps 
 we can go down to the hustings and the ballot-box, 
 and attend to our duties as American citizens, at¬ 
 tracted thither by the smell of praise. If culture 
 cannot rule, then culture will secede from politics. 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 257 
 
 Class secession is hardly less dangerous than geo¬ 
 graphical secession. The withdrawal of the culti¬ 
 vated class from politics may ultimately work as 
 much harm as the open secession of our Carolinas 
 and Georgias from the Union. [Applause.] Class 
 secession from politics is often actuated by much the 
 same thoughts as those which governed the geo¬ 
 graphical secession of States. We are not believers 
 in democracy. We desire to have our rights respected 
 without defending them. We, as an educated and 
 propertied class, are by and by in a new organization 
 of society in America, to have the privileges that 
 belong of natural right to culture and wealth. There 
 will be a new order of government brought into 
 existence ultimately on this continent. Give America 
 two hundred people to the square mile, and count of 
 heads and clack of tongues will not keep life and 
 property safe here. Democracy is failing. We will 
 not be in at its death. We will wait until our great 
 cities have suffered enough to put their interests into 
 the hands of wealth, and to insist on a property qual¬ 
 ification for the franchise. Already the whisper of 
 fleeced municipal tax-payers grows loud in many 
 commercial circles, that a stronger government is 
 needed in America than ever the many can exercise 
 over the many. 
 
 For one, I believe the young men of the United 
 States have as a mass given up even the unexpressed 
 fear that we shall abandon Democracy. These feel¬ 
 ings of some of the cultured, that new arrangements 
 will be made, are not shared by the remnant of the 
 
258 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 generation which preserved the Union. A large part 
 of the young men of America who should now he 
 entering on patriotic public careers are already in 
 their graves. In this country, my generation is a 
 fragment. It is a tattered remnant left over after 
 battle. We have already laid down many lives, 
 that men may have the right of franchise. We 
 have done something for the unification of this 
 country. We are willing to do more. May .the 
 right arms of the young men of America drop from 
 their sockets, and may their tongues cleave to the 
 roofs of their mouths, if they ever forget that their 
 brethren died, not only for the unification, but for the 
 purification of this nation [applause], or if they ever 
 fail to endeavor in politics, in social life, in the pul¬ 
 pit, on the platform, in the press, to sell their lives as 
 dearly in the purification of America, as their breth¬ 
 ren have sold theirs in its unification. [Applause.] 
 
 I thank Providence, that the young citizens’ polit¬ 
 ical committees are acting as if they believe that 
 Democracy must try out its own problems, and must 
 purify the ballot-box to begin with. We have com¬ 
 mittees organized in this city in one of the parties, 
 and I wish they were organized in both, to clarify 
 registration-lists ; to watch ballot-boxes; to see to it 
 that the press is prompted occasionally in the proper 
 direction; and, above all, to inspirit public senti¬ 
 ment, by throwing the power of the parlor and the 
 platform and the pulpit at the right moments toward 
 the just side, when make-weights are of commanding 
 consequence in closely-contested elections. There are 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 259 
 
 in this city no peculiar corruptions. Undoubtedly 
 Boston politics are better than those of New York or 
 Chicago, on the whole ; but that would not be saying 
 any thing greatly to our praise. There are, however, 
 in this city, young men’s committees on the watch; 
 and it turns out, as a practical result, that an immi¬ 
 grant cannot be made a voter now unless he is per¬ 
 sonally present before the recording officers to take 
 the oath and to sign the declaration that he becomes 
 a citizen. There are young men’s committees on the 
 watch; and every ballot-box in this city will be man¬ 
 aged according to law, if the young men have their 
 way; and if they do not have their way, and the 
 boxes are not thus managed, the young men, aided 
 by persons older than they, — wisdom with the aged, 
 action with the young, — mean to prosecute every 
 case of violation of law to conviction. [Applause.] 
 There have been many shrewd arrangements made 
 here, as elsewhere, for the violation of law at the 
 ballot-boxes; but either these arrangements will be 
 defeated, or somebody will suffer if they are carried 
 out. 
 
 In one of the largest cities of the West an election 
 committee announced, not long ago, that the day 
 has gone by when it can be expected that the culti¬ 
 vated class in our great towns will take any active 
 part in politics. A friend of mine, who was in a 
 pulpit in that city, but who now, thank God! is 
 a minister in New England, and who never preached 
 politics in the pulpit, went down to the ballot-boxes 
 of a corrupt ward, and challenged votes on several 
 
260 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 different occasions, and did so all alone. The op¬ 
 posing party put three or four roughs near him. Al¬ 
 though they did not attack him physically, they filled 
 the day with profanity and obscenity, and endeav¬ 
 ored to drive away all decent men by their Harpy 
 clamor. The scholar held his place, threatened pros¬ 
 ecution against lax officers behind the ballot-boxes, 
 and the result was that a dark ward was illuminated, 
 if not by noon, at least by twilight, and many a wild 
 beast of politics ran to his den. [Applause.] From 
 that single example it became, in several wards of 
 that city, the fashion for cultivated men to go down 
 and challenge roughs at the polls. Many Englishmen 
 like to do this. 
 
 John Bright says that he will not vote for a wider 
 extension of the franchise in Great Britain, than is 
 in existence there, because political absenteeism 
 ruins a good cause every now and then. If we 
 could have political absenteeism throttled, one feels 
 almost sure that this sea of unrest in which many of 
 us swim, this feeling that the universal franchise of 
 America is to ruin her, would subside at last. The 
 secession of culture from primary political meetings, 
 and from the post of Argus at the ballot-box, is to be 
 judged by its fruits. We are to assert our rights, or 
 have none. We are to occupy our privileges, or 
 find them, little by little, curtailed. Even if you 
 could do but little at the polls, you might do much 
 at the primary meetings. Even if you could do 
 little in the latter places, you might do much by 
 Inspiriting young men who have time for the work, 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 261 
 
 fco attend to the patriotic duties of unmasking 
 fraud. 
 
 Lord Bacon affirms that the best materials for 
 political prophecy are the unforced opinions of young 
 men. In this Commonwealth, when Charles Sumner 
 and Henry Wilson were beginning their career, the 
 use of that Baconian method of forecast might have 
 been profitable to both the timid friends and the 
 haughty opponents of just reform. If the young 
 men of America enforce the suffrage laws, they will 
 have the sound part of the press of every political 
 party on their side. Let them use their opportu¬ 
 nities resolutely, and politics — which are only a 
 weather-vane — will show which way the wind 
 blows. The American people are iEolus’ cave. If 
 in the national sea the political ship rots in calms, 
 or sails in the wrong direction, the fault is not as 
 much with the pirates on board as with iEolus, who 
 'might awaken hurricanes in his mountain, and send 
 them forth to make JEneas pray as he never did of 
 old when he had lately left Dido, or when the jealous 
 Juno shook the Trojan fleet. 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 Whom does Shakspeare make us admire? An 
 author is what he causes us to love. Do we find our¬ 
 selves retaining to the end our respect for Falstaff? 
 Ilenry V., who had toyed with vice in Falstaff s com¬ 
 pany. rejects the gray-haired lecher after becoming 
 king. 
 
262 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 “ The King to Falslaff. I know thee not, old man; fall to thy 
 prayers; 
 
 How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! 
 
 I have long dreamed of such a kind of man, 
 
 So surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane; 
 
 But being awaked, I do despise my dream. 
 
 Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace. 
 
 • ••••••• 
 
 Reply not to me with a fool-born jest; 
 
 Presume not that I am the thing I was, 
 
 For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive, 
 
 That I have turned away my former self; 
 
 So will I those that kept me company. 
 
 • •••••••• 
 
 I banish thee on pain of death. 
 
 As I have done the rest of my misleaders, 
 
 Not to come near our person by ten mile.” 
 
 2 King Henry IV., act v. sc. 5. 
 
 Although Falstaff is pictured in detail, Shak> 
 speare plainly intends that we shall not permanently 
 admire him. In the end he crushes even our animal 
 regard for Sir John by making him die a loathsome 
 death. “Let thy blood be thy direction till thy 
 death! ” says Shakspeare: “ then if she that lays 
 thee out says thou art a fair corse, I’ll be sworn, 
 and sworn upon it, she never shrouded any but 
 lazars.” QTroilus and Cressida , act ii. sc. 3.) Do 
 we love Iago ? Shakspeare pictures him, too, in 
 great detail; but on the whole our feeling in his 
 presence is that which comes to us when we look 
 into a serpent’s eye. 
 
 There are roisterers and feather-heads reflected 
 in the lower half of Shakspeare’s mirror; but if you 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 263 
 
 will fathom your own experience with this writer, 
 you will find that it is not the lower, but the upper 
 half of his far-spread and astoundingly faithful glass, 
 that captures you permanently. I am not, perhaps, 
 advanced enough in life to understand Shakspeare; 
 it is said that no man under forty can read Shak¬ 
 speare ; but, as I grow older, I am more and more 
 attracted to the upper half, or, I may say, to the 
 upper quarter, of his mirror. He holds up the pic¬ 
 turing glass to all that is; and undoubtedly, in a 
 full representation of human nature, especially as it 
 was forced on Shakspeare’s attention in a roistering 
 court and in the life of the London of the days of 
 Queen Elizabeth, there will be blotches in the lower 
 half of the reflecting glass. But the. final impres¬ 
 sion Shakspeare seems to make is that the upper 
 half of the mirror was himself. He dwells in his 
 advanced years more upon the Unseen, upon the 
 moral law, upon the great characters of his tragedies, 
 and less and less, except as a foil, upon the lower 
 traits and the coarser in human nature. 
 
 Indeed, if I were to select out of all Shakspeare’s 
 characters the one person whom he most resembles, 
 I should take Henry V. That soul was equipped 
 for peace or war, for sport or earnest, for the light 
 things of the day of harmless play, or the stern 
 things of loud resounding contest. And he grew 
 better, Henry V. did, as he grew older. It is true 
 he had been a companion of Falstaff; no doubt his 
 youth had many things in it which he deserved to 
 regret , but he grows as his years advance, and when 
 
264 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 kingship comes to him, he is a hero, one of the most 
 full-orbed of all the characters delineated on Shak¬ 
 speare’s canvas. Hamlet ? He was like Shakspeare 
 in several very great things, but he did not love ac¬ 
 tion. He was almost insanely dilatory in cases of 
 the highest importance; but Shakspeare had decis¬ 
 ion as well as gentleness. A not unsuccessful prac¬ 
 tical activity, we know, filled a considerable part of 
 his life. For the benefit of a softer and less stren¬ 
 uous age than his own, and almost as if the false 
 standards of the school of Crenialitat in literature 
 were foreseen by him, he drew in Hamlet, I think, 
 a balanced criticism of high intellectual power and 
 subtle intensities of emotion not conjoined with suffi¬ 
 cient executive capacity. 
 
 Shakspeare knew better and better, as he grew 
 older, what Kant affirmed in his last years, that the 
 best melody of the harp never is obtained until the 
 chords are stretched tightly, and the plectrum with 
 which the resonant wires are struck is made firm. 
 Madame de Stael says of Schiller, that his Muse was 
 Conscience. His poetry has several of its high crys¬ 
 talline fountain-springs in the heights of Kant’s phi¬ 
 losophy. But even Schiller once complained that 
 Kant’s system of ethics occasionally takes on the 
 aspect of a repulsive, hard, imperative morality, and 
 is not attractive. Kant replied that the two objects 
 cf moral training are to give “ hardihood ” in the ap¬ 
 plication of conscience to the motives, and “glad¬ 
 ness” in prompt and full obedience to the moral 
 sense. (.Metaphysics of Ethics , edition by Semple.) 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 265 
 
 Hardihood! That is the stretching of the chord 
 tautly in the harp. Hardihood! That is the firm¬ 
 ness of the plectrum which smites the chord. Hardi¬ 
 hood ! That is the first object of moral training. 
 Gladness is the second, but that is only the music 
 derived from the tightly-stretched chord and the 
 firm plectrum. More and more, as Shakspeare 
 grew older, he tightened the moral strands in the 
 colossally wide harp of his nature, and the stretched 
 chords he struck with firm plectra, and their far- 
 resonant upper notes at last are harmonious with 
 the deep bass of the moral law in the nature of 
 things. That is Shakspeare. [Applause.] Here is 
 the last tone shed from Shakspeare’s harp within 
 the hearing of this world: “ I commend my soul 
 into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and as¬ 
 suredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus 
 Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life ever¬ 
 lasting.” {Shakspeare’s Will.') 
 
 Undoubtedly he was an American in his youth. 
 He thought that good music could be produced by 
 leaving the chords in delightfully uncertain positions. 
 A firm plectrum ! Why, no; it would not be liberal 
 to make the plectrum solid! It would not be in har¬ 
 mony with advanced thought to tighten the chords! 
 Hardihood! Why, the very word is odious to luxu¬ 
 rious liberalism! Hardihood! Schiller protests 
 against Kant, when he misunderstands him, not 
 knowing that hardihood is the mother of gladness 
 in the harp. 
 
 Shakspeare in his youth, no doubt, married toe 
 
266 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 early, and yet none too early; and to this keen, self 
 imposed curse he has himself again and again made 
 allusion. I beg your pardon; you must meditate in 
 secret oyer these stains of blood in Shakspeare’s 'writ¬ 
 ings. Do you remember that he says that on cer¬ 
 tain conditions heaven will bless a marriage, and on 
 certain other conditions will not? Perhaps Henry 
 V. did not perceive the kingship that was before him. 
 Undoubtedly Shakspeare, who for a hundred years 
 after his death was not widely worshipped, did not 
 understand what kingship was awaiting him. As 
 Henry V. strengthened himself the moment he be¬ 
 came king, so Shakspeare would have done if he could 
 have seen in advance the enduring responsibilities of 
 the regnancy which literature was providing for him. 
 But, had he foreseen this, he could not have tightened 
 more strenuously than he did one chord in his harp. 
 
 If the fact, without the form, of marriage, exists 
 before 
 
 “ All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
 With full and holy rite be ministered, 
 
 No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall 
 To make this contract grow; but barren hate, 
 
 Sour-eyed disdain and discord, shall bestrew 
 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
 That you shall hate it both; therefore take heed 
 As Hymen’s lamps shall light you.” 
 
 Tempest , act iv. sc. 1. 
 
 See Winter’s Tale, act i., line 278, “ before her troth-plight.” 
 Also, White’s Shakspeare, vol. i. pp. xxix.-xxxvi. 
 
 Shakspeare did not know through how many hun¬ 
 dreds of years these words would be read over his 
 
SHAKSPEABE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 267 
 
 tomb in Stratford-on-Avon, and how many times 
 they would recall the crime of a woman eight years 
 older than he, and his own infamy; but he would 
 not have erased them, could he have foreseen all. 
 
 When men in our day strike the lower chords of 
 their nature loosely; when we are taught by ad¬ 
 vanced materialists that we are not responsible, what¬ 
 ever we do; when Hackel asserts that the will is 
 never free; when a professor, possessed of excellent 
 literary capacity, and reverenced throughout the civil¬ 
 ized world as a leader in physical science, stands up 
 and maintains, as Tyndall did at Birmingham lately, 
 in so many words, that “ the robber, the ravisher, and 
 the murderer offend because they cannot help offend¬ 
 ing,” then I like to look across that green shield, sir 
 [turning to the Rev. Mr. Rainsford], called England, 
 circled by the azure deep, and to remember that 
 Birmingham and Stratford-on-Avon lie not far apart, 
 as bosses on that buckler of the world’s good sense. 
 Lord Bacon said that he wished a science of the 
 human passions could be elaborated. Gervinus, the 
 best German commentator on Shakspeare, affirmed 
 that if Bacon had turned to his neighbor William he 
 might have had such a science, and that one to-day 
 might be constructed from his works. Tyndall stands 
 at Birmingham, and proclaims, as Hackel has taught, 
 that the science of the human passions must include 
 the assertion that the will is never free. Lord Bacon, 
 I think, feels uneasy on his pedestal at such science. 
 At any rate, Gervinus on the Rhine, in his tomb, 
 whispers yet to civilization, that William Shakspeare 
 
268 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Bacon’s contemporary, will teach us the true theory 
 of the passions. When Tyndall utters at Birming¬ 
 ham his famous assertion that the robber, the rav- 
 isher, the murderer, offend because they cannot help 
 offending, I turn to this grave at Stratford-on-Avon, 
 — the grave of an honest man; for we have seen the 
 epitaph its occupant has put upon himself, and how 
 little he excused any of his own misdeeds, — and I 
 listen. I hear words, three hundred years old, indeed ; 
 but I recommend them, in spite of their antiquity, as 
 a motto for Tyndall’s address : — 
 
 “ This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, 
 when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of 
 our own behavior, — we make guilty of our disasters 
 the sun, the moon and stars; as if we were villains 
 by necessity.” [Applause.] Professor Tyndall hears 
 that at Birmingham? “Fools by heavenly compul¬ 
 sion ; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical pre¬ 
 dominance ; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an 
 enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all 
 that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.” Does 
 Tyndall listen ? “ An admirable evasion of abomi¬ 
 
 nable man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge 
 of a star! My nativity was under Ursa Major; so 
 that it follows that I am rough. Tut! I should have 
 been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firma- 
 nent twinkled on my birth.” [Applause.] ( King 
 Lear, act i. sc. 2.) 
 
 But it is impossible to condense a tithe of what 
 ought to be said concerning Shakspeare’s views on 
 conscience, into the hand’s-breadth of time allowed 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 269 
 
 me here. Let me notice the leading questions to 
 which he gives answers, although I cannot recite all 
 the replies. 
 
 1. Whom does Shakspeare make us admire ? 
 
 2. Whom does he make responsible for sin ? 
 
 3. Does Shakspeare make the word ought heavier 
 than any other syllable ? 
 
 4. Does Shakspeare teach that there is a God in 
 conscience ? 
 
 5. Does he give conscience a prophetic office ? 
 
 6. Does Shakspeare make judicial blindness one 
 of the inevitable penalties of the suppression of 
 light ? 
 
 7. May conscience, in the opinion of Shakspeare, 
 make cowards of us all? 
 
 8. How, according to this poet, does conscience 
 color the external world ? 
 
 9. Does Shakspeare admit that conscience may 
 cease to exist or to act in the incorrigibly evil ? 
 
 10. What, according to Shakspeare, are some of 
 the physical effects of conscience ? 
 
 11. Does he teach that conscience may produce 
 despair ? 
 
 12. Is Shakspeare supported in his conclusions by 
 other poets ? 
 
 As one would touch the multiplex array of banks 
 of organ-keys at random to test the tones of some 
 mighty instrument, so I open a copy of Shakspeare 
 ut random, with no partisan plea to make. What 
 massive and overawing tones are these first ones 
 I happen to strike! — 
 
270 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 “In the great hand of God I stand.” 
 
 Why ? Because I am following my conscience in 
 opposing a bloody tyrant. 
 
 “ And thence 
 
 Against the undivulged pretence I fight 
 Of treasonous malice.” 
 
 Macbeth, act ii. sc. 3. 
 
 But here is a contrasted tone strangely deep: — 
 
 “What do I fear? myself ? There’s none else by; 
 Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. 
 
 Is there a murderer here ? No; yes, I am; 
 
 Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason; why? 
 Lest I revenge. What ? Myself upon myself ? 
 
 Alack ! I love myself. Wherefore ? for any good 
 That I myself have done unto myself ? 
 
 Oh, no! alas! I rather hate myself, 
 
 For hateful deeds committed by myself.” 
 
 King Richard III., act v. sc. 3. 
 
 “ The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death.” 
 
 Measure for Measure , act iii. sc. 1 . 
 
 “ The dread of something after death 
 
 . . . puzzles the will. 
 
 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” 
 
 Hamlet, act iii. sc. 1. 
 
 “ Conscience is a thousand swords.” * 
 
 King Richard III., act v. sc. 2. 
 
 Strike the peaceful, cheering, mysteriously com 
 manding notes once more : — 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 271 
 
 “What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? 
 Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, 
 
 And he but naked, though locked up in steel, 
 
 Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.” 
 
 2 King Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 “Be just, and fear not. 
 
 Let all the ends thou ciim’st at be thy country’s, 
 
 Thy God’s, and truth’s; then, if thou fall’st, O Cromwell, 
 Thou fall’st a blessed martyr.” 
 
 King Henry VIII., act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 “ Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair, 
 
 When the intent of bearing them is just.” 
 
 King Henry IV. sc. 3. 
 
 “ My wooing mind shall be expressed 
 In russet yeas and honest kersey noes.” 
 
 Love's Labor Lost , act v. sc. 2. 
 
 “That which you speak is in your conscience washed.” 
 
 King Henry V., act i. sc. 2. 
 
 “ What motive may 
 
 Be stronger with thee than the name of wife ? 
 
 That which upholdeth him that thee upholds, — 
 
 His honor: oh, thine honor, Lewis, thine honor.” 
 
 King John , act iii. sc. 1. 
 
 “ A peace above all earthly dignities, 
 
 A still and quiet conscience.” 
 
 Henry VIII., act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 Strike the contrasted notes again: — 
 
 “ First Murderer. — So when he opens his purse to give us oui 
 reward, thy conscience flies out. 
 
 Second Murderer. — Let it go; there’s few or none will en¬ 
 tertain it. 
 
 First Murderer. —How if it come to thee again ? 
 
 Second Murderer. — I’ll not meddle with it. It is a danger¬ 
 ous thing. It makes a man a coward. A man cannot steal, but 
 
272 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 it accuseth him; he cannot swear, but it checks him; tis a 
 blushing, shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom ; it 
 fills one full of obstacles; it made me once restore a purse ot 
 gold that I found; it beggars any man that keeps it; it is 
 turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing. 
 
 First Murderer. — Zounds, it is even now at my elbow.” 
 
 King Richard III., act i. sc. 4. 
 
 “ My conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says very 
 wisely to me, 1 Budge not.’ — ‘ Budge,’ says the fiend. ‘ Budge 
 not,’ says my conscience.” 
 
 Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 “ I, I myself, sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left 
 hand and hiding mine honor in my necessity, am fain to shuf¬ 
 fle, to hedge, and to lurch.” 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 “ Put up thy sword, traitor, 
 
 Who mak’st a show, but durst not strike, thy conscience 
 Is so possessed with guilt. Come from thy ward, 
 
 For I can here disarm thee with this stick, 
 
 And make thy weapon drop.” 
 
 Tempest, act i. sc. 2. 
 
 “ O heaven, put in every honest hand a whip 
 To lash the rascals naked through the world.” 
 
 Othello, act iv. sc. 2. 
 
 “ The color of the king doth come and go 
 Betwixt his purpose and his conscience 
 Like heralds ’twixt two dreadful battles set. 
 
 His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.” 
 
 King John, act iv. sc. 2. 
 
 “ The grand conspirator. 
 
 With clog of conscience and sour melancholy 
 Hath yielded up his body to the grave. . . . 
 
 The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labor, 
 
 With Cain go wander through the shades of night.” 
 
 King Richard II., act v. sc. 2 
 
SHAKSPEARE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 273 
 
 “ The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul.” 
 
 King Richard III., act i. sc. 3. 
 
 I open the book again, and hear Shakspeare answer 
 the question whether blindness sent as a judgment 
 results from the suppression of light. Lady Macbeth 
 says, — 
 
 “ The raven himself is hoarse 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements. Come, you spirits 
 That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, 
 
 And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full 
 Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood; 
 
 Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
 
 That no compunctious visitings of nature 
 Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
 The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, 
 
 And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, 
 
 Wherever in your sightless substances 
 
 You wait on nature’s mischief ! Come, thick night, 
 
 And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
 
 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
 
 Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark 
 To cry, ‘ Hold, hold ! ’ ” 
 
 Macbeth, act i. sc. 4. 
 
 The prayer was answered. Never, since it was 
 written in the Bhagvat Gheeta that “ repeated sin 
 impairs the judgment,” and that “ he whose judg¬ 
 ment is impaired sins repeatedly; ” never, since the 
 Spanish proverb was invented that “ every man is 
 the son of his own deeds,” — lias the law of judicial 
 blindness been proclaimed with such sublimity as in 
 this utterly unpartisan and secular passage. Mao- 
 beth himself, under similar circumstances, says: — 
 
274 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 ..... “ Come, seeling night, 
 
 Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond 
 
 Which keeps me pale! Light thickens ; and the crow 
 
 Makes wing to the rooky wood.” 
 
 Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2= 
 
 A fiend in human form in Titus Andronicus has 
 made evil his good: — 
 
 “ Lucius. — Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him. 
 There let him stand and rave, and cry for food. 
 
 Aaron, — I am no baby, I, that with base prayers 
 I should repent the evils I have done; 
 
 Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did 
 Would I perform if I might have my will. 
 
 If one good deed in all my life I did, 
 
 I do repent it from my very soul.” 
 
 Titus Andronicus, act v. sc. 3. 
 
 Elsewhere Shakspeare affirms most definitely that 
 it is a pervasive natural law that, — 
 
 “ When we in our viciousness grow hard, 
 
 (O misery on’t! ) the wise gods seel our eyes ; 
 
 In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us 
 Adore our errors; laugh at us, while we strut 
 To our confusion.” 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 13. 
 
 Is there a God in conscience ? 
 
 “ Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak 
 His powerful sound within an organ weak.” 
 
 All's Well That Ends Well, act ii. sc. 1. 
 
 u I hold you as a thing ensky’d and sainted, 
 
 By your renouncement an immortal spirit, 
 
 And to be talked with in sincerity, 
 
 As with a saint! ” 
 
 Measure for Measure , act i., sc. 3. 
 
SHAKSPEAKE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 275 
 
 When Shakspeare is called on to paint despair, he 
 makes the elements themselves draw the picture. 
 
 “ Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous I 
 Methought the billows spoke and told me of it: 
 
 The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, 
 
 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced 
 The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.” 
 
 Tempest , act iii. sc. 3. 
 
 You know Arthur was about to he murdered, and 
 that Hubert was suspected of the murder; and when 
 there is a confronting of that crime with the light of 
 conscience, Shakspeare makes one of his characters 
 
 say, —- 
 
 “ Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
 Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, 
 
 Art thou damned, Hubert.” 
 
 Really, I beg pardon for reading this in Boston, 
 and so near Indian Orchard. [Laughter.] 
 
 “ If thou didst but consent 
 To this most cruel act, do but despair; 
 
 And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread 
 That ever spider twisted from her womb 
 Will serve to strangle thee ; a rush will be a beam 
 To hang thee on ; or, wouldst thou drown thyself, 
 
 Put but a little water in a spoon, 
 
 And it shall be as all the ocean, 
 
 Enough to stifle such a villain up.” 
 
 King John , act iv. sc. i. 
 
 This serious observer represents ruin as possible to 
 
 man: — 
 
276 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 “ Oh, she is fallen 
 Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea- 
 Hath drops too few to wash her clean again; 
 
 And salt too little which may season give 
 To her foul-tainted flesh.” 
 
 Much Ado About Nothing , act iv. sc. i. 
 
 % 
 
 Shakspeare is nowhere a partisan. He lived be* 
 tween two conflicting currents, men that were some¬ 
 times called fanatics, but who have founded New 
 England, — quite a piece of work in the world, — 
 and the rough, roistering circles of the court. 
 Shakspeare was no fanatic, but he was no roisterer. 
 In few words, he sums up, in a passage more terrific, 
 probably, than any other in his dramas, the whole 
 effect, mental and physical, of an upbraiding con¬ 
 science. How does this man, speaking to roisterers 
 in his own audience, and writing under the fear that 
 he was to be called illiberal, and sneered at for 
 sympathizing with fanatics, — how does this man, to 
 whom human nature lay open, draw the picture of a 
 soul accusing itself ? 
 
 “ Macbeth. One cried, ‘ God bless us ! * and ‘ Amen/ the 
 other: 
 
 As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands, 
 
 Listening their fear, I could not say ‘ Amen/ 
 
 When they did say, ‘ God bless us.’ ” 
 
 What are the physical effects of an outraged mora^. 
 sense ? Shakspeare has answered. 
 
 “ Lady Macbeth. Consider it not so deeply. 
 
 Macbeth. But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘ Amen * ? 
 
 I had most need of blessing, and ‘ Amen * 
 
SHAKSPEAKE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 277 
 
 Stuck in my throat. 
 
 Lady Macbeth. These deeds must not be thought 
 After these ways : so it will make us mad. 
 
 Macbeth. Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘ Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth does murder sleep; ’ the innocent sleep : 
 
 Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, 
 
 The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, 
 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course ; 
 
 Chief nourisher in life’s feast. 
 
 Lady Macbeth. What do you mean ? 
 
 Macbeth. Still it cried, ‘ Sleep no more ! ’ to all the house: 
 
 • Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
 Shall sleep no more ; Macbeth shall sleep no more.’ 
 
 Lady Macbeth. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy 
 thane, 
 
 You do unbend your noble strength, to think 
 So brain-sickly of things. Go get some water, 
 
 And wash this filthy witness from your hand. 
 
 Why did you bring these daggers from the place ? 
 
 They must be there. Go carry them; and smear 
 The sleepy grooms with blood. 
 
 Macbeth. I’ll go no more ; 
 
 I am afraid *<) think what L have done: 
 
 Look on’t again, I dare not. 
 
 Lady Macbeth. Infirm of purpose! 
 
 Give me the daggers : the sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures ; ’tis the eye of childhood 
 That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed 
 I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; 
 
 For it must seem their guilt. 
 
 Exit. LLnocking within* 
 Macbeth. Whence is that knocking? 
 
 How is’t with me when every noise appalls me ? 
 
 What hands are here ? Ha ! they pluck out my eyes. 
 
 Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood 
 Clean from my hand ? No; this my hand will rather 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
 
 Making the green one red.” 
 
 Macbeth , act ii. ec. 2. 
 
278 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 But if Macbeth had read Professor Tyndall’s speech 
 at Birmingham, undoubtedly advanced thought would 
 have washed the murderer’s red right hand. 
 
 To summarize all that Shakspeare has said, there¬ 
 fore, take this opinion from Gervinus : — 
 
 “ The deity in our bosoms Shakspeare has be¬ 
 stowed with intentional distinctness, even upon his 
 most abandoned villains, and that, too, when they 
 deny it. To nourish this spark, and not to quench 
 it, is the loud sermon of all his works.” (Gervinus, 
 Commentaries on Shakspeare , p. 910.) 
 
 Do you say that, after all, Shakspeare was morbid 
 on a few points? Well, if he was, Lord Byron 
 was not. Omitting Milton, Schiller, and Dante, and 
 Euripides, Sophocles, and iEschylus, who, on the 
 subject of Conscience, agree with Shakespeare only 
 too startlingly, we will take B} r ron as a fair answer 
 to the question, whether other poets sustain the 
 prophet and philosopher of Stratford-on-Avon. Lord 
 Byron had guilt of which he knew the extent, ana 
 which God has not suffered to be known to men at 
 large, and I hope never will suffer to be known. 
 But this poet, understanding very well that the 
 world was listening, and that on every sentence of 
 his concerning the moral sense and remorse a micro¬ 
 scope would be placed age after age, does not hesi¬ 
 tate to say, — 
 
 “ Yet still there whispers the small voice within, 
 
 Heard through God’s silence, and o’er glory’s din; 
 Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod, 
 
 Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.” 
 
 Byron, Island. 
 
SHAKSPEABE ON CONSCIENCE. 
 
 2T9 
 
 “ But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws 
 So much as when we call our old debts in 
 At sixty years, and draw the accounts of evil, 
 
 And find a deuced balance with the Devil.” 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Here are the most incisive and perhaps the most 
 self-revelatory words Byron ever wrote concerning 
 Conscience: — 
 
 “ The mind that broods o’er guilty woes 
 Is like the scorpion girt by fire : 
 
 In circle narrowing as it glows, 
 
 The flames around their captive close; 
 
 Till inly scorched by thousand throes, 
 
 And inly maddening in her ire, 
 
 One and sole relief she knows, — 
 
 The sting she nourished for her foes, 
 
 Whose venom never yet was vain, 
 
 Gives but one pang, and cures all pain, 
 
 She darts into her desperate brain. 
 
 So do the dark in soul expire, 
 
 Or live like scorpion girt by fire ; 
 
 So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, 
 
 Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven ; 
 
 Darkness above, despair beneath, 
 
 Around it flame, within it death.” 
 
 Byron, Giaouit 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
V . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 . i 
 
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3 
 
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4 
 
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5 
 
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7 
 
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8 
 
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9 
 
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 History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Tes¬ 
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II 
 
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 History op the Egyptian Religion. Translated from 
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 Ancient Cities, from the Dawn to the Daylight. 
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