own nature against the violation of better instincts, if not as the
reflection or embodiment of what is popularly called conscience. It
can scarcely be doubted that the Erinnyes of Aeschylus were deities of
remorse, and possess psychological significance as symbols of the
primitive action of conscience.[2] Though Sophocles is less of a
theologian than Aeschylus, and problems of Ethics count less than the
human interest of his story, the law of Nemesis does find in him
dramatic expression, and the noble declaration put into the mouth of
Antigone concerning the unwritten laws of God that 'know no change and
are not of to-day nor yesterday, but must be obeyed in preference to
the temporary commandments of men,'[3] is a protest on behalf of
conscience against human oppression. And even in Euripides, regarded
as an impious scoffer by some scholars,[4] there are not wanting,
especially in the example of Alcestis, evidence of belief in that
divine justice and moral order of which the virtues of self-devotion
and sacrifice in the soul of man are the witness.

Socrates was among the first teachers of antiquity who led the way to
that self-knowledge which is of the essence of conscience, and in the
'Daemon,' or inner voice, which he claimed to possess, some writers
have detected the trace {70} of the intuitive monitor of man. Plato's
discussion of the question, 'What is the highest good?' involves the
capacity of moral judgment, and his conception of reason regulating
desire suggests a power in the mind whose function it is to point to
the highest good and to subordinate to it all the other impulses of
man. In the ethics of Aristotle there is a reference to a faculty in
man or 'rule within,' which, he says, the beasts lack.

But it is among the Stoics that the word first appears; and it is to
the Roman moralist, Seneca, that we are indebted for the earlier
definite perception of an abiding consciousness bearing witness
concerning a man's own conduct. The writings of Epictetus, Aurelius,
and Seneca approach in moral sublimity and searching self-analysis the
New Testament Scriptures. It was probably to the Stoics that St. Paul
was indebted for the word _syneidesis_ to which he has given so
distinctive a meaning that it has coloured and determined the whole
later history of the moral consciousness.

2. But if the word as used in the New Testament comes from Greek
sources the idea itself was long prevalent in the Jewish co