Among savages legal codes,
unwritten and perhaps not even clearly formulated, yet exacting and
strictly enforced by penalties, come to form an important supplement
to instinct, custom, and proverbial wisdom. But quite as important
is the gradual development of an inward guide--those very various
secondary impulses and inhibitions which we hump together because of
their common function and call the moral sense or conscience. We shall
now consider briefly the origin of this internal steering-apparatus.
The latest and most mature guide of all, reflective insight, arises
in marked degree only when abstraction and analysis. There is no problem
connected with its origin except the general problems of the development
of human reason. How moral insight may be trained and brought to bear
upon conduct will, it is hoped, be clear to the student who patiently
studies this volume.
Out of what has conscience developed?
The "conscience" of our moralizing and religious literature figures
as a sharply defined and easily recognizable "faculty," like "will"
or "reason." But this classification, though useful, is misleading
by its simplicity. If we observe by introspection what goes on in our
minds when we "will" or "reason" or "listen to conscience," we shall
find all sorts of emotions, ideas, impulses, surging back and forth,
altering from moment to moment, never twice the same. At another period
of our lives, or in another man's mind, the psychological stuff
pigeonholed under these names may be almost entirely different.
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