But the
existence of our well-defined moral sense, with its significant role
in modern life, needs no supernatural explanation. It has grown up
and come to be what it is as naturally as have our language, our customs,
and our physical organs.
What is conscience now? It is a valuable exercise in introspection
to observe a case of "conscience" in one's own life and note of what
mental stuff it is made. When a number write down their findings
without mutual suggestion, the results are usually widely divergent.
Any of the original ingredients hitherto mentioned may be discovered,
or other personal factors. There may be present to consciousness only
a vague uneasiness or restlessness, or there may be a sophisticated
recurrence of the concepts of "conscience," "duty," etc. The one
universal fact is that there is a conflict between some primitive
impulse or passion and some maturer mental checks. Any sort of mental
stuff that serves the purpose of controlling desire will do; we must
define conscience in terms not of content but of function. There is
no such unity in the material as the single name seems to imply; and
whether or not that name shall be given to a given psychological state
is a matter of usage in which there is considerable variation.
In general, we reserve the name "conscience" for the vaguer and more
elusive restraints and leadings, the sense of reluctant necessity whose
purpose we do not clearly see although we feel its pressure, the
accumulated residuum of long inner experience and many influences from
without.
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