The apotheosis of conscience has been
of immense use in leading men to heed its voice and obey its leading.
Yet this blind allegiance has its dangers; conscience has often been
a cruel tyrant. It is by no means an always-safe guide, as we shall
presently note. And as men grow more and more adjusted by instinct
and training to their real needs, they will have less and less need of
this helmsman. After all, there is something wrong with a life that
needs conscience; it is a transition help for the long period of man's
maladjustment. Spencer looks forward, a little too hopefully, perhaps,
to a time in the measurable future when we shall have outgrown the
need of it, when we shall wish to do right and need no compulsion,
outer or inner. And Emerson, in a well known passage, writes: "We
love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous.
When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant
as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are, and
not turn sourly on the angel and say, 'Crump is a better man with his
grunting resistance to all his native devils.'" A Chinese proverb says,
"He who finds pleasure in vice and pain in virtue is still a novice in
both." The saint is he who has learned really to love virtue, in its
concrete duties, better than all the allurements of sin; to him we
may say, as Virgil said to Dante, "Take thine own pleasure for thy
guide henceforth.
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