appeared to maintain the position that, when a man is unbiassed by
passion or interest, his moral judgments are and must be invariably the
same. This error has, undoubtedly, been largely fostered by the loose
and popular use of the terms conscience and moral sense. These terms,
and especially the word conscience, are often employed to designate a
sort of mysterious entity, supposed to have been implanted in the mind
by God Himself, and endowed by Him with the unique prerogative of
infallibility. Even so philosophical and sober a writer as Bishop Butler
has given some countenance to this extravagant supposition, and to the
exaggerated language which he employs on the prerogatives of conscience,
and to the emphatic manner in which he insists on the absolute, if not
the infallible, character of its decisions, may be traced much of the
misconception which still prevails on the subject. But we have only to
take account of the notorious fact that the consciences of two equally
conscientious men may point in entirely opposite directions, in order to
see that the decisions of conscience cannot, at all events, be credited
with infallibility. Those who denounce and those who defend religious
persecution, those who insist on the removal and those who insist on the
retention of religious disabilities, those who are in favour of and
those who are opposed to a relaxation of the marriage laws, those who
advocate a total abstention from intoxicating liquors and those who
allow of a moderate use of them,--men on both sides in these
controversies, or, at least, the majority of them, doubtless act
conscientiously, and yet, as they arrive at opposite conclusions, the
conscience of one side or other must be at fault. There is no act of
religious persecution, there are few acts of political or personal
cruelty, for which the authority of conscience might not be invoked. I
doubt not that Queen Mary acted as conscientiously in burning the
Reformers as they did in promulgating their opinions or we do in
condemning her acts. It is plain, then, not only that the decisions of
conscience are not infallible, but that they must, to a very large
extent, be relative to the circumstances and opinions of those who form
them. In any intelligible or tenable sense of the term, conscience
stands simply for the aggregate of our moral opinions reinforced by the
moral sanction of self-approbation or self-disapprobation. That we ought
to act in accordance with the