Conscience Sentence Examples
He did the task for the sake of his conscience.
His fine character and conscience earned him universal respect and confidence.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
He told the truth for his conscience's sake.
Did he think she had no conscience about what happened?
And to attain this end, we have the light called conscience that God has implanted in our souls.
Matters of warrants and probable cause escaped his wife's rationale, replaced by her conscience, which stood firmly in charge.
I think most of us go to prayer only from this principle to satisfy a natural conscience.
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
AdvertisementThe conscience of humanity is the beginning of law making.
All conscience effort to think fled and was replaced by a new instinct, the primal need to feed.
If attempts at suicide are any indication of guilt, this man must have a very uneasy conscience.
Even kids have a conscience.
He had a conscience void of any modern evil thoughts.
AdvertisementSo, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and so my conscience was at ease.
According to Vico, law emanates from the conscience of mankind, in whom God has infused a sentiment of justice.
He won't want anyone with a conscience.
The foe that was advancing in the opposite direction, though without the conscience of a hostile purpose, was the new power of human reason animated with the revived sentiment of classicism.
So absolute became the papal sovereignty over conscience that more than one government took alarm.
AdvertisementThey were instinctively aware that the effort was for liberty of action, thought and conscience in the future.
She was their diary, their calendar and their conscience, and they loved her like a sister.
A man of fearless honesty, quick and catholic sympathies, broad culture, and many friends in intellectual and religious circles, he became one of the most influential journalists of the day, his fine character and conscience earning universal respect and confidence.
Sometime in the 40s she got it in her head that they were violating people, and developed a guilty conscience.
Pius might no longer rule over the papal states; but there was consolation in the thought that, within the realm of conscience, his power had increased by leaps and bounds.
AdvertisementThe other world, with its imagined heaven and hell, haunted the conscience like a nightmare.
There are certain special uses of the word "conscience."
This new spirit in Italy emancipated human intelligence by the classics; in Germany it emancipated the human conscience by the Bible.
Reckless of political expediency, Sumner moved that the Fugitive Slave Act be forthwith repealed; and for more than three hours he denounced it as a violation of the constitution, an affront to the public conscience, and an offence against the divine law.
The "Burlingame Treaty" recognizes China's right of eminent domain over all her territory, gives China the right to appoint at ports in the United States consuls, "who shall enjoy the same privileges and immunities as those enjoyed by the consuls of Great Britain and Russia"; provides that "citizens of the United States in China of every religious persuasion and Chinese subjects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience and shall be exempt from all disability or persecution on account of their religious faith or worship in either country"; and grants certain privileges to citizens of either country residing in the other, the privilege of naturalization, however, being specifically withheld.
Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked by conscience on his death-bed, forbade the levying of the hearth-tax (1380).
And its moral decadence means a decay of conscience.
I feel that I have lost the virginity of my conscience.
Inwardly "he took a remorse of conscience and detestation of mind."
As regards moral sentiments generally, the view suggested by Mill is more definitely given by the chief living representative of the associationist school, Alexander Bain; by whom the distinctive characteristics of conscience are traced to " education under government or authority," though prudence, disinterested sympathy and other emotions combine to swell the mass of feeling vaguely denoted by the term moral.
The combination of antecedents is somewhat differently given by different writers; but all agree in representing the conscience of any individual as naturally correlated to the interests of the community of which he is a member, and thus a natural ally in enforcing utilitarian rules, or even a valuable guide when utilitarian calculations are difficult and uncertain.
Thus, in his view, not merely natural inclinations towards pleasures, or the desires for selfish happiness, require to be morally resisted; but even the prompting of the individual's conscience, the impulse to do what seems to him right, if it comes into conflict with the common sense of his community.
Liberty of conscience is unrestricted.
The act shocked the religious conscience of western Asia; the subsequent murder of Sennacherib was held to be an expiation of it, and his successor Esarhaddon hastened to rebuild the old city, to receive there his crown, and make it his residence during part of the year.
He built all on conscience, as that wherein man stands in direct personal relation with God as moral sovereign, and the seat of a moral individuality which nothing can rightly infringe.
They found a brilliant interpreter in Aeschines, who, after having been a tragic actor and a clerk to the assembly, had entered political life with the advantages of a splendid gift for eloquence, a fine presence, a happy address, a ready wit and a facile conscience.
Conscience, as the subjective expression of the presupposed identity of reason and nature in their bases, guarantees the practicability of our moral vocation.
During the famine which began in the winter of 1739 one-fifth of the population is supposed to have perished; yet it is hardly noticed in literature, and seems not to have touched the conscience of that English public which in 1755 subscribed £roo,000 for the sufferers by the Lisbon earthquake.
The Irish bishops remained silent, while in England the " Nonconformist conscience " revolted.
You must have something pretty ghastly on your conscience to make such a fuss about my trusting you.
Why has every man a conscience, then?
We swim, swim, swim...are you my conscience?"
In his own house and in his Own conscience, every Englishman, as far as the government was concerned, was the master of his destiny.
Still on this view, even if the authority of conscience be asserted, we seem reduced to an ultimate dualism of our rational nature.
In so doing, they separated intellectual from popular life; and acting in this spirit, through the need of a moral renaissance, they reverted to primitive Christianity, substituting the inner and individual authority of conscience for the general and external authority of the Church.
Barere, however, appears to have been wholly free from any guiding principle; conscience he had none, and his conduct was regulated only by the determination to be on the side of the strongest.
With liberty of conscience during the Revolution, from 1868 to 1877, the Church lost ground, and anti-clerical ideas prevailed for a while in the centres of republicanism in Catalonia and Andalusia; but a reaction set in with the Restoration.
For instance, liberty of conscience, established for the first time in 1869, was reduced to a minimum of toleration for Protestant worship, schools and cemeteries, but with a strict prohibition of propaganda and outward signs of faith.
These admissions, together with his elucidation of the idea of doctrinal development and his eloquent assertion of the supremacy of conscience, have led some critics to hold that, in spite of all his protests to the contrary, he was himself somewhat of a Liberal.
When the timing was right, he had the advantages of strength and negotiating without the hindrance of mercy or a conscience.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. She glanced up at him again, not expecting someone from the lower class and trained for battle to wear such a classic quote.
Now at least he could include a reference to Cece Baldwin's name without a guilty conscience.
The Nigerian section of the CWI actively collaborated with the ruling class in forming the National conscience party - a radical bourgois party.
I had sat no further from a Cabinet Minister than from a dining companion, and had abused him according to my conscience.
Concordats extend the reach of Canon Law, and human rights lawyers express concern about the impending Slovak " conscience concordats extend the reach of Canon Law, and human rights lawyers express concern about the impending Slovak " conscience concordat " .
He finds a perfect counterbalance in Max, whose conscience and desire for self-preservation are at odds with each other throughout the film.
In the Crucible, the idea of conscience in strongly emphasized.
Parliament was deaf; the Press, with but few exception, was callous; the public conscience seemed hardened as a nether millstone.
She had no idea that Klimps could write, and he had never shown any inkling of possessing a conscience.
An example of this is a criminal who lacks moral conscience but is extremely intelligent.
There are no more prisoners of conscience, no more extrajudicial killings, and civil liberties are, by and large, respected.
The 100 years of the 18th century saw the most extraordinary stirrings of conscience.
This man has " bugged " my conscience since I found the tombstone of his wife at Castleton.
Ghostly, the eyes of thy soul is thy reason; thy conscience is thy visage ghostly.
Thus poetical wisdom, appearing as a spontaneous emanation of the human conscience, is almost the product of divine inspiration.
Its subject is the `` conceit "that men first clipped away the `` con" from "conscience" and left "science" and "na mair."
And honesty, conscience and equity were said to be the fundamental principles of the court.
Lord Nottingham in 1676 reconciled the ancient theory and the established practice by saying that the conscience which guided the court was not the natural conscience of the man, but the civil and political conscience of the judge.
Astute, ambitious and unrestrained by conscience, Dubois ingratiated himself with his pupil, and, while he gave him formal school lessons, at the same time pandered to his evil passions and encouraged him in their indulgence.
Hitherto, by his own showing, the private life of the young tsar had been unspeakably abominable, but his sensitive conscience (he was naturally religious) induced him, in 1550, to summon a Zemsky Sobor or national assembly, the first of its kind, to which he made a curious public confession of the sins of his youth, and at the same time promised that the realm of Russia (for whose dilapidation he blamed the boyar regents) should henceforth be governed justly and mercifully.
Haggai's reproofs touched the conscience of the Jews, and the book of Zechariah enables us in some measure to follow the course of a religious revival which, starting with the restoration of the temple, did not confine itself to matters of ceremony and ritual worship. On the other hand, Haggai's treatment of his theme, practical and effective as it was for the purpose in hand, moves on a far lower level than the aspirations of the prophet who wrote the closing chapters of Isaiah.
At one of the meetings the father of a newly-born child explained that he could not go outside France to seek a pure baptism and that his conscience would not permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Romish Church.
This secured complete liberty of conscience everywhere within the realm and the free right of public worship in all places in which it existed during the years 1596 and 1597, or where it had been granted by the edict of Poitiers (1577) interpreted by the convention of Nerac (1578) and the treaty of Fleix (1580) - in all some two hundred towns; in two places in every bailliage and senechaussee; in the castles of Protestant seigneurs hauts justiciers (some three thousand); and in the houses of lesser nobles, provided the audience did not consist of more than thirty persons over and above relations of the family.
The suppression of Roman Catholicism was zealously pursued by Cromwell; the priests were hunted down and imprisoned or exiled to Spain or Barbados, the mass was everywhere forbidden, and the only liberty allowed was that of conscience, the Romanist not being obliged to attend Protestant services.
As Theodoret had previously been a constant defender of Nestorius it was impossible for him to concur in this sentence upon his unfortunate friend with a clear conscience, and in point of fact he did not change his own dogmatic position.
If Lang is right, " primitive " peoples drew typical theistic inferences, and argued to God from nature and from conscience, though without displacing other types of religious belief and practice.
Hitherto he had rarely appeared at court; but now the queen entrusted him not only with the care of her conscience, but also with the benefices in the royal patronage.
He was no real statesman or minister of the Gospel, but a blind fanatic, who failed to see that faith, which is the gift of God, cannot be imposed on any conscience by force.
For himself, he rests, like the mystic, upon an immediate vision of truth; but he differs from most mystics in having a message for others; and - again unlike most mystics - he addresses the hearer's conscience, which we might call (in one sense) the mystic element in every man - or better, perhaps, the prophetic. Can the positive grounds for a prophet's message be analysed and stated in terms of argument?
Thus a step forward was made in securing the freedom of conscience proclaimed in the October manifesto and denounced by a synod of Orthodox bishops at Kiev in 1908, though the rights granted by the Duma were seriously curtailed in the Imperial Council, and have been largely rendered a dead letter by the action of the administration.
Grindal lacked that firm faith in the supreme importance of uniformity and autocracy which enabled Whitgift to persecute with a clear conscience nonconformists whose theology was indistinguishable from his own.
His sister Drusilla had broken the Law by her marriage with Felix; and his own notorious relations with his sister Berenice, and his coins which bore the images of the emperors, were an open affront to the conscience of Judaism.
Four years later an insurrection broke out, owing to the violation of the provisions of an imperial decree (February 1856), whereby liberty of conscience and equal rights and privileges with Mussulmans had been conferred upon Christians.
If it be asked why the character may not be displayed in ordinary acts instead of miracles, the answer may be given, "Miracle is the certificate of identity between the Lord of Nature and the Lord of Conscience - the proof that He is really a moral being who subordinates physical to moral interests " (Liddens' Elements of Religion, p. 73).
If, on what is called the "jural" theory, these laws are regarded as deriving their authority from an external source, the operation of conscience is so far limited.
It may be held to recognize the validity of divine laws, for example; or it may be confined to the deductive process of applying those laws to particular cases, known as "cases of conscience" (see Casuistry).
In either theory, conscience may be understood as the active principle in the soul which, in face of two alternatives, tells a man that he ought to select the one which is in conformity with the moral law.
Apart from the two functions of discerning between right and wrong, and actively predisposing the agent to moral action, conscience has further a retrospective action whereby remorse falls upon the man who recognizes that he has broken a moral law.
A Conscience clause is the term given to a special provision often inserted in an English act of parliament to enable persons having religious scruples to absent themselves from certain services, or to abstain from certain duties, otherwise prescribed by the act.
On the 12th of January 1904 Loisy wrote to Cardinal Merry del Val that he received the condemnation with respect, and condemned whatever might be reprehensible in his books, whilst reserving the rights of his conscience and his opinions as an historian, opinions doubtless imperfect, as no one was more ready to admit than himself, but which were the only form under which he was able to represent to himself the history of the Bible and of religion.
He lives in history, apart from his three hymns, mainly as a man of unstained purity and invincible fidelity to conscience, weak only in a certain narrowness of view which is a frequent attribute of the intense character which he possessed.
Emphasis was made to fall on the reason, the conscience and the will of the finite personality; and just as these were found to be native in him they were held to be immanent in the cause of his universe.
During the next four weeks no effort was spared to shake the determination of Huss; but he steadfastly refused to swerve from the path which conscience had once made clear.
The liberty of the press, the right of free expression of opinion by word, writing, printed matter, etc., liberty of conscience and religious profession are guaranteed.
The attempt, though defeated, had been supported by a majority of the representatives from Upper Canada, and Baldwin's fastidious conscience took it as a vote of want of confidence.
But whatever the guilt or innocence of the Jesuits, and whether their suppression were ill-advised or not, there appears to be no ground for impeaching the motives of Clement, or of doubting that he had the approval of his conscience.
The confessor brought the casuist's principles to bear on the conscience of his penitents, and thus saved them from the danger of acting on their own responsibility (see Casuistry).
The Dissenters were by no means satisfied with Forster's "conscience clause" as contained in the bill, and they regarded him, the ex-Quaker, as a deserter from their own side; while they resented the "25th clause," permitting school boards to pay the fees of needy children at denominational schools out of the rates, as an insidious attack upon themselves.
In the first place, owing to the general disuse of such ministrations, there were none among the English clergy who had experience in delicate questions of conscience; and there had been no treatment of casuistry since Sanderson and Jeremy Taylor (see Casuistry).
I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of conscience...
I do not wish to take it on my conscience.
So why not share what truly inspires us, or touches the heart, or purges the conscience?
On the basis of this, the worshipers, once purged, have no more conscience of sins.
He experiences no troubles, no problems, no qualms of conscience.
If Rilke or Beethoven can salve the conscience of a guilty man then they too are guilty by association.
When Tony Blair said Africa was a scar on the conscience of the world, he spoke on behalf of millions.
The Deanery of Coventry and Litchfield was subsequently offered him, which from scruples of conscience, he refused.
I bypassed appealing to conscience in favor of pointing out various self-serving reasons to take organics seriously.
These tactics will help you enjoy your albums with a clear conscience!
For the budget conscience shopper, keep an open mind and shop thrift stores for the perfect pair.
In recent years, Arnold's political affiliations have brought on a more environmentally conscience mindframe.
Although this seems contrary to most consumers' financial conscience, distressed denim is actually more expensive than ordinary styles.
Organic natural gift shops are the best place to find gifts with a conscience.
Stage four is the Law and Order, or Social System and Conscience stage.
Stage six is the Principled Conscience or the Universal/Ethical Principles stage.
Adults here are motivated by individual conscience that transcends cultural, religious, or social convention rules.
Of extreme concern is the rare child who acts with no remorse, and appears to have to conscience.
The child develops appreciation of rules and a conscience that influences compliance and affects disobedience.
Internal motivations of conscience and guilt do not develop until the middle childhood years.
It was powerful enough, however, to stick forever in the national conscience.
He said I could spend his money with a clear conscience.
All this attention from Howard could be due to a guilty conscience.
You wanted nice things, so you substituted your family for a conscience.
Yully stopped at the end of the driveway and squeezed her eyes closed, tormented by her conscience.
He'd obeyed the Code and his predecessor without question, until forced to choose between them and his conscience.
I hardly think that after all this time my fangs have suddenly developed a conscience.
He found that puzzling, never considering himself to have much of a conscience.
I'm not about to have your dead body on my conscience.
You can never be sure Byrne won't get a conscience...
Unrequited love could wreak havoc on a conscience.
It is a forcible plea for freedom of conscience.
He becomes the interpreter and vindicator of divine justice, the vocal exponent of a nation's conscience.
It divided the Whigs into "Cotton Whigs" and "Conscience Whigs," and in time led to the downfall of the party.
The part played by conscience in relation to general moral laws and particular cases will vary according to the view taken of the character of the general laws.
Conscience money is the name given to a payment voluntarily made by a person who has evaded his obligations, especially in respect of taxes and the like.
Conscience Courts were local courts, established by acts of parliament in London and various provincial towns, for the recovery of small debts, usually sums under £5.
Although there was little or no stress laid on either the joys or the terrors of a future life, the movement was not infrequently accompanied by most of those physical symptoms which usually go with vehement appeals to the conscience and emotions of a rude multitude.
In 1677 the fundamental laws of West New Jersey were published, and recognized in a most absolute form the principles of democratic equality and perfect freedom of conscience.
Wesley had not yet found the key to the heart and conscience of his hearers.
Personal liberty, liberty of conscience, speech, assembly, petition, association, press, liberty of movement and security of home, were without real guarantee even within the extremely small limits in which they nominally existed.
Clear and forcible in style and arrangement, they are models of Puritan exposition and of appeal through the emotions to the individual conscience, illuminated by frequent flashes of spontaneous and often highly unconventional humour.
And on the 21st of November 1907 a papal motu proprio declared all the decisions of the Biblical Commission, past and future, to be as binding upon the conscience as decrees of the Roman Congregations.
Believers in law have put their trust in authority or logic; while believers in disposition chiefly look to our instinctive faculties - conscience, common-sense or sentiment.
But common-sense and conscience are quite as definite guides as logic or authority; and there seems no good reason for refusing to give the name of casuistry to their operations.
Thamin maintains that, if his heroes did not form great characters, at any rate they taught the Roman child to train its conscience.
The medieval mind was only too prone to look on morality as a highly technical art, quite as difficult as medicine or chancery law - a path where wayfaring men were certain to err, with no guide but their unsophisticated conscience.
For it is to the individual conscience that God speaks; through the struggles of the individual conscience He builds up a strong and stable Christian character.
But the Protestant casuist never pretended to speak authoritatively; all he did was to give his reasons, and leave the decision to the conscience of his readers.
But Prussia was not ripe for a struggle with Austria, even had Frederick William found it in his conscience to turn his arms against his ancient ally, and the result was the humiliating convention of Olmtitz (November 29th, 1850), by which Prussia agreed to surrender her separatist plans and to restore the old constitution of the confederation.
A clear conscience, not less than a sense of his own superiority to others at the court of Louis XIII., made the cardinal haughtily assert his ascendancy, and the king shared his belief in both.
Elected by the tiers Nat of Vermandois to represent it in the states-general of Blois, he contended with skill and boldness in extremely difficult circumstances for freedom of conscience, justice and peace.
The law to be administered in each state is the customary law of the state, so far as it is in accordance with the justice, equity and good conscience, and not opposed to the spirit of the law in the rest of British India.
He was never crowned at Babylon, which was in a perpetual state of revolt until, in 691 B.C., he shocked the religious and political conscience of Asia by razing the holy city of Babylon to the ground.
The simoniacal election of Pietro Mezzabarba as bishop of Florence (1068) caused serious disturbances and a long controversy with Rome, which ended in the triumph, after a trial by fire, of the mdnk Petrus Igneus, champion of the popular reform movement; this event indicates the beginnings of a popular conscience among the Florentines.
He denounced Milton's Divorce i at Pleasure, was answered in the Colasterion, and contemptuously referred to in the sonnet "On the Forcers of Conscience."
His subsequent defence of the proposed grant, on the ground that it would be improper and unjust to exclude the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland from a " more indiscriminating support " which the state might give to various religious beliefs, was regarded by men of less sensitive conscience as only proving that there had been no adequate cause for his resignation.
It cannot have been his conscience which constrained him to leave Teresa, for his next step was to marry Berengaria of Castile, who was his second cousin.
He conceived it as " a religious monopoly " to which " the nation at large contributes," while " Presbyterians alone receive," and which placed him in " a relation to the state " so " seriously objectionable " as to be " impossible to hold."5 The invidious distinction it drew between Presbyterians on the one hand, and Catholics, Friends, freethinking Christians, unbelievers and Jews on the other, who were compelled to support a ministry they " conscientiously disapproved," offended his always delicate conscience; while possibly the intellectual and ecclesiastical atmosphere of the city proved uncongenial to his liberal magnanimity.
At the Reformation Luther laid down the principle that the civil government is concerned with the province of the external and temporal life, and has nothing to do with faith and conscience.
The result is explained only by the dialogue, recorded exclusively in John, which shows the accused and the Roman meeting on the highest levels of the thought and conscience of the time.
In the popular mind the hosts of exciting oriental cults, which in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Empire filled Rome with the rites of mysticism and initiation, held undisputed sway; and with the more educated a revived philosophy, less accurate perhaps in thought, but more satisfying to the religious conscience, gave men a clearer monotheistic conception, and a notion of individual relations with the divine in prayer and even of consecration.
And Origen compares them to the sacred vessels, and would have them " guarded secretly behind the veil of the conscience and not lightly produced before the public."
Liberty of conscience in religious matters was secured and the right of private worship to those of the " so-called Reformed religion."
As has been mentioned already, the new charter softened religious tests for office and the suffrage, and accorded " liberty of conscience " except to Roman Catholics.
He took the liberal side in the questions of Maynooth, of the admission of Jews to parliament, of the Gorham case, and of the educational conscience clause.
They treated the people with horrible barbarity, so that the conscience of Europe was aroused, and England under Cromwell called on the Protestant powers to join in remonstrance to the duke of Savoy and the French king.
It springs from the religious principle that each body of believers in actual church-fellowship must be free of all external human control, in order the more fully to obey the will of God as conveyed to conscience by His Spirit.
Whatever may be thought of their application of these principles, there is no mistaking the deeply religious aim of these separatists for conscience' sake, viz.
Here he, first of known English writers, sets forth a doctrine which, while falling short of the Anabaptist theory that the civil ruler has no standing in the affairs of the Church, in that religion is a matter of the individual conscience before God, yet marks a certain advance upon current views.
Hence their doctrine was not really one of freedom of conscience or toleration.
To afford a home for the centralized activities of the Union, the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, was built on the site of the Fleet prison - soil consecrated by sacrifice for conscience under Elizabeth - and opened in 1875.
Church and State, citizenship in the one and membership in the other, thus became identical, and the foundation was laid for those troubles and consequent severities that vexed and shamed the early history of Independency in New England, natural enough when all their circumstances are fairly considered, indefensible when we regard their idea of the relation of the civil power to the conscience and religion, but explicable when their church idea alone is regarded.
They say, ` Come to us ye who are of clean hands and pure speech, ye who are unstained by crime, who have a good conscience towards God, who have done justly and lived uprightly.'
I took the best ` mugwump' stand - my own conscience, my own judgment were to decide in all things.
At a subsequent confederation, held at Lublin in June, Zebrzydowski was reinforced by another great nobleman, Stanislaus Stadnicki, called the Devil, who "had more crimes on his conscience than hairs on his head," and was in the habit of cropping the ears and noses of small squires and chaining his serfs to the walls of his underground dungeons for months at a time.
For the shock of the first partition was so far salutary that it awoke the public conscience to a sense of the national inferiority; stimulated the younger generation to extraordinary patriotic efforts; and thus went far to produce the native reformers who were to do such wonders during the great quadrennial diet.
As a presumptive ruler of England she was, like Cecil, and for that matter the future archbishop Parker also, too shrewd to commit herself to passive or active resistance to the law; and they merely anticipated Hobbes in holding that the individual committed no sin in subordinating his conscience to the will of the state, for the responsibility for the law was not his but the state's.
Elizabeth resisted the demand, not from compassion or qualms of conscience, but because she dreaded the responsibility for Mary's death.
But it was one thing to touch the conscience of the nation and another to change its heart and renew its whole life.
Compared with the thoroughness of most other catechisms this one seems very scanty, but it has a better chance of being memorized, and its very simplicity has given it a firm hold on the inner life and conscience of devout members of the Anglican communion throughout the world.
If submissions do not appease my conscience I must imbts to two oersons of discretion and abide by their decision."
The corporation has neither control over the police nor any judicial duties, excepting as regards a court of conscience dealing with debts under 40s.
They extend this idea of equality also to the government authorities, obedience to whom they do not consider binding upon them in those cases when the demands of these authorities are in conflict with their conscience; while in all that does not infringe what they regard as the will of God they willingly fulfil the desire of the authorities.
They consider killing, violence, and in general all relations to living beings not based on love as opposed to their conscience and to the will of God.
The hardships he suffered were as nothing compared with the pangs of conscience which plagued him when he thought of the despair of his father, who had meant to make a pastor of this prodigal son, to whom both church and college now seemed for ever closed.
His genius was unusually rich and versatile; his artistic conscience always alert and sober.
Secular state education and the "conscience clause" were anathema to him.
In the first two centuries the rite is spoken of as an offering and as a bloodless sacrifice; but it is God's own creations, the bread and wine, alms and first-fruits, which, offered with a pure conscience, he receives as from friends, and bestows in turn on the poor; it is the praise and prayers which are the sacrifice.
The general sense is clear, that those who consume the holy food without a clear conscience, like those who handle sacred objects with impure hands, will suffer physical harm from its contact, as if they were undergoing the ordeal of touching a holy thing.
Similarly, the idea of God is a symbolical representation of the voice of conscience guiding from within.
It was an austere religion, inculcating self-restraint, courage and honesty; it secured peace of conscience through forgiveness of sins, and abated for those who were initiated in its mysteries the superstitious terrors of death and the world to come.
When a layman found himself in doubt, his duty was not to consult his conscience, but to take the advice of his confessor; while the confessor himself was bound to follow the rules laid down by the casuistical experts, who delivered themselves of a kind of "counsel's opinion" on all knotty points of practical morality.
But however vague and uncertain might be the meaning of Hoadly in regard to several of the important bearings of the questions around which he aroused discussion, he was explicit in denying the power of the Church over the conscience, and its right to determine the condition of men in relation to the favour of God.
As yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervour born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs when it is losing its vitality."
One of the so-called "Philosophers of Identity," Krause endeavoured to reconcile the ideas of a God known by Faith or Conscience and the world as known to sense.
God, intuitively known by Conscience, is not a personality (which implies limitations), but an all-inclusive essence (Wesen), which contains the Universe within itself.
In that year the Orissa famine awakened the public conscience, and the commission presided over by Sir George Campbell laid down the lines upon which subsequent famine-relief was organized.
After twentyfour years of suffering for his conscience he died in prison and was buried in an unknown grave in the parish church at Wisbeach on the 16th of October 1584.
More was sent for to Lambeth, where he offered to swear to the succession, but steadily refused the oath of supremacy as against his conscience.
Meanwhile, through holding with Kant that man is not God, but a free spirit, whose destiny it is to use his intelligence as a means to his duty, he is still the resort of many who vindicate man's independence, freedom, conscience, and power of using nature for his moral purposes, e.g.
Finally, according to him, having inferred matter as the condition of our perceptions, we are entitled to infer that the condition of the existence of matter is God, whose nature, however, can be inferred only by practical reason from conscience.
Newman (1801-1890), maintaining the authority of conscience and the probabilism of the understanding, concluded to the necessity of a higher authority in the primitive church.
Accordingly many of them, while placing their hope for the future upon Messiah and His eagerly expected return in power, might seek assurance of present forgiveness of daily offences and cleansing of conscience in the old mediatorial system.
To him, also, in his capacity of theologian, the whole of Europe submitted every obscure, delicate or controverted question, whether legal problem or case of conscience.
The chancellor never realized the gravity of the onslaught which, with his Kulturkampf, he was making upon the conscience and liberty of his Catholic fellow citizens.
In carrying out the regime of Rampolla, which was, in every respect, a bad imitation of that of Antonelli, the Vatican left no stone unturned in its attempt to coerce the conscience of the French royalists; it did not even stop at dishonour, as was evidenced by the case of the unhappy Mgr d'Hulst, who, in order to evade the censorship of his pamphlet on Old Testament criticism, had to abandon both his king and his principles, only to die in exile of a broken heart.
If in this confession he to some extent tampered with his conscience, there is every reason to believe that his culpable timidity was occasioned, not by personal fear, but by anxiety lest by his death he should hinder instead of promoting the cause of truth.
Since the 12th century, the papal court had already had officials known as penitentiaries (poenitentiarii) for matters of conscience; the organization of the Penitentiary, after several modifications, was renewed by Benedict XIV.
The Pricke of Conscience was edited (1863) by Richard Morris for the Philological Society.
Origen taught that a germ of the spiritual body is in the present body, and its development depends on the character, that perfect bliss is reached only by stages, that the evil are purified by pain, conscience being symbolized by fire, and that all, even the devil himself, will at last be saved.
In that year Bishop Hannington went to Africa; and his murder in 1885 (first reported in England on New Year's Day, 1886) deeply touched the Christian conscience.
According to the Memoirs of Sir James Melville, both Lord Herries and himself resolved to appeal to the queen in terms of bold and earnest remonstrance against so desperate and scandalous a design; Herries, having been met with assurances of its unreality and professions of astonishment at the suggestion, instantly fled from court; Melville, evading the danger of a merely personal protest without backers to support him, laid before Mary a letter from a loyal Scot long resident in England, which urged upon her consideration and her conscience the danger and disgrace of such a project yet more freely than Herries had ventured to do by word of mouth; but the sole result was that it needed all the queen's courage and resolution to rescue him from the violence of the man for whom, she was reported to have said, she cared not if she lost France, England and her own country, and would go with him to the world's end in a white petticoat before she would leave him.
In place of the old system of privileges and exemptions were set equality before the law, universal liability to taxation, abolition of serfdom, security of person and property, liberty of conscience and of the press.
The Belgian constitution stipulates for " freedom of conscience, of education, of the press and also of the right of meeting," but the sovereign must be a member of the Church of Rome.
Before its dissolution the diet promulgated a decree providing that, pending the assembly of a national council, each prince should order the ecclesiastical affairs of his own state in accordance with his own conscience, a striking victory for the reformers and incidentally for separatist ideas.
The Pricke of Conscience is a long religious poem, in rhyming couplets, dealing with the beginning of man's life, the instability of the world, why death is to be dreaded, of doomsday, of the pains of hell, and the joys of heaven, the two latter subjects being treated with uncompromising realism.
Under Mowat's successors the barnacles which always attach to a party long in power became unpleasantly conspicuous, and in January 1905 the conscience of Ontario sent the conservatives into power, more from disgust at their opponents than from any enthusiasm for themselves.
For general talk about the evils of slavery they cared little, but this assertion that every slave was entitled to instant freedom filled them with alarm and roused them to anger, for they saw that, if the conscience of the nation were to respond to the proposition, the system must inevitably fall.
This object he achieved, but soon his conscience smote him, and he declared these words to have been an inspiration of Satan.
He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture.
Castlereagh, whose single-minded aim was the restoration of "a just equilibrium" in Europe, reproached the tsar to his face for a " conscience " which suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.'
A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the diet of Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending - without, that is, being properly speaking a Reformer - Diirer in his art and his thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character and conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy.
He had an elastic conscience which was always at the beck and call of his desire, and he cared little for principle.
His parricidal rebellion lay heavy on his conscience; he practised asceticism at intervals, and dreamed of eastern pilgrimages.
In the hands of the ministers a Calvinism more Calvinistic than Calvin's was the bitter foe of freedom of life, of conscience, and of religious tolerance.
Meanwhile she only asked freedom of conscience for herself, and her mass in her own chapel.
The subjects to which he looked as the most essential of all - the universality of the divine love, the supreme importance of the moral and spiritual elements of religion, the supremacy of conscience, the sense of the central citadel of Christianity.
The ground of moral judgments in the book is both external (the law of God) and internal (the conscience of man); these two are fused into one, and both go back ultimately to current customs and ideas.
A natural religion, on the other hand, was not, he thought, the one universal religion of every clime and age, but rather the spontaneous development of the national conscience varying in varying circumstances.
This Aufkleirung prepares the way for the rule of conscience, for the moral view of the world as subject of a moral law.
On the one hand, the suppression is denounced as a base surrender to the forces of tyranny and irreligion, an act of treason to conscience, which reaped its just punishment of remorse; on the other hand, it is as ardently maintained that Clement acted in full accord with his conscience, and that the order merited its fate by its own mischievous activities which made it an offence to religion and authority alike.
He cherished high purposes and obeyed a lively conscience.
But the theses posted somehow touched heart and conscience in a way unusual in the common subjects of academic disputation.
The one thing which satisfied his conscience was the burdensome thing he had to do, and that was to procure an Indulgence - a matter made increasingly easy for him as time went on.
No compromise was possible between the declaration that man's conscience could only be bound by the Word of God and the emperor's belief in the infallibility of a general council.
Though a strict adherent of the creed of Rome, he was a Liberal, nay a Radical, as regards measures for the vindication of human liberty, and he sincerely advocated the rights of conscience, the emancipation of the slave and freedom of trade.
Oudh was thus annexed without a blow; but it may be doubted whether the one measure of Lord Dalhousie upon which he looked back himself with the clearest conscience was not the very one that most alarmed native public opinion.
In the letters to Atticus, on the other hand, we have Cicero's private journal, his confessions to the director of his conscience, the record of his moods from day to day, without alterations of any kind.
Though Clarke can thus be defended against this and similar criticism, his work as a whole can be regarded only as an attempt to present the doctrines of the Cartesian school in a form which would not shock the conscience of his time.
This was followed,in 1750 by The Abuses of Conscience, afterwards inserted in vol.
Denying any form of moral sense or conscience, he regards all the social virtues as evolved from the instinct for self-preservation, the give-and-take arrangements between the partners in a defensive and offensive alliance, and the feelings of pride and vanity artificially fed by politicians, as an antidote to dissension and chaos.
In its origin this system was a perfectly honest attempt to widen the sphere of obedience by making morality wholly objective and independent of the vagaries of the individual conscience.
Whatever a grave doctor said must have some solid reasons behind it - aliqua niti probabilitate - and humble lay-folk could act upon it without a twinge of conscience.
If God spoke directly to the individual conscience, what was the use of intermediaries ?
But the cause in which German intellect and will were enlisted was so different that it is difficult not to make a formal separation between that movement which evolved culture in Italy and that which restored religion in Germany, establishing the freedom of intelligence in the one sphere and the freedom of the conscience in the other.
Puritanism indicated a revolt of the religious conscience of the nation against the arts and manners of the Renaissance, against the encroachments of belligerentCatholicism, against the corrupt and Italianated court of James I., against the absolutist pretensions of his son Charles.
Theological and political utilitarianism alike had been individualistic. But Darwin shows how the moral sense or conscience may be regarded as derived from the social instincts, which are common to men and animals.
When he has reached the stage of reflection there arises what we know as conscience.
As a matter of fact, the earlier and more democratic types of primitive society, uncontaminated by our civilization, do not present many features to which the modern conscience can take exception, but display rather the edifying spectacle of religious brotherhoods encouraging themselves by mystical communion to common effort.
In all this the Anabaptists had maintained one central article of faith that linked them to the Zwickau prophets, belief in conscience, religious feeling, or inner light, as the sole true beginning or ground of religion; and one other article, held with equal vigour and sincerity, that true Christians are like sheep among wolves, and must on no account defend themselves from their enemies or take vengeance for wrong done.
They held "that no church ought to challenge any prerogative over any other"; and that "the magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience nor compel men to this or that form of religion."
Stead in 1885, as he had earlier supported Mrs Josephine Butler in a similar cause; he attacked the trade in alcohol; was an anti-vivisectionist; he advocated arbitration; and his vehement attacks on Sir Charles Dilke and Charles Stewart Parnell originated the phrase the "Nonconformist conscience."
In 1558 he published his "Appellation" to the nobles, estates and commonalty against the sentence of death recently pronounced upon him, and along with it a stirring appeal "To his beloved brethren, the Commonalty of Scotland," urging that the care of religion fell to them also as being "God's creatures, created and formed in His own image," and having a right to defend their conscience against persecution.
About this time, indeed, there was in Scotland a remarkable approximation to that solution of the toleration difficulty which later ages have approved; for the regent was understood to favour the demand of the "congregation" that at least the penal statutes against heretics "be suspended and abrogated," and "that it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religion and conscience as we must answer to God."
Edinburgh was still doubtful, and the queen regent held the castle; but a truce between her and the lords for six months to the 1st of January 1560 was arranged on the footing that every man there "may have freedom to use his own conscience to the day foresaid" - a freedom interpreted to let Knox and his brethren preach publicly and incessantly.
But the third, inflicting heavy penalties, with death on a third conviction, on those who should celebrate mass or even be present at it, showed that the reformer and his friends had crossed the line, and that their position could no longer be described as, in Knox's words, "requiring nothing but the liberty of conscience, and our religion and fact to be tried by the word of God."
Virtue then consists in following the true law of our nature, that is, conscience.
The literal text of the Septuagint seems to be the only decisive authority, and that is so sacred and almighty, that, whenever it comes into collision with the human conscience, the latter is silenced when the voice of revelation speaks."
It is not, indeed, to be contended that Rabelais was a man with whom religion was in detail a constant thought, that he had a very tender conscience or a very scrupulous orthodoxy.
Committed to the Tower, he was examined in the presence of Elizabeth, who asked him if he acknowledged her to be really queen of England, and on his replying straightly in the affirmative, she made him offers, not only of life but of wealth and dignities, on conditions which his conscience could not allow.
The morality attaching to the oath, so deeply rooted in the conscience of primitive peoples, was expressed in the cult of Zeus "OpKCOS, the God who punished perjury.
But he chanced upon some of Zwingli's works and Bullinger's commentaries on St Paul's epistles; and after some molestation in England and some correspondence with Bullinger on the lawfulness of complying against his conscience with the established religion, he determined to secure what property he could and take refuge on the continent.
He will not admit that there is any evidence of true virtue in the approbation of virtue and hatred of vice, in the workings of conscience or in the exercises of the natural affections; he thinks that these may all spring from self-love and the association of ideas, from " instinct " or from a " moral sense of a secondary kind " entirely different from " a sense or relish of the essential beauty of true virtue."
Similarly, the question debated at such length by English moralists as to the nature of the moral faculty (moral sense, conscience, &c.) and the controversy concerning the freedom of the will belong entirely to psychology.
His most celebrated work is his Cases of Conscience, deliberate judgments upon points of morality submitted to him.
The Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience, the Pilgrimage of Good Intent, the Pilgrimage of Seek Truth, the Pilgrimage of Theophilus, the Infant Pilgrim, the Hindoo Pilgrim, are among the many feeble copies of the great original.
Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Abraham Lincoln, that slavery was to be overthrown under the constitution and in the Union, by forbidding its growth and trusting to an awakened conscience, enforced by an enlightened self-interest.
He probably did more than any other man in America to lead the Puritan churches from a faith which regarded God as a moral governor, the Bible as a book of laws, and religion as obedience to a conscience to a faith which regards God as a father, the Bible as a book of counsels, and religion as a life of liberty in love.
This force is exempt from all foreign service, and the chief office of the viguiers is the administration of criminal justice, in which their decisions, given simply according to their judgment and conscience, there being no written laws, are final.
In 1847 the vigour with which Sumner denounced a Boston congressman's vote in favour of the Mexican War Bill made him the logical leader of the " Conscience Whigs," but he declined to accept their nomination for Congress.
The speech provoked a storm of anger in the South, but the North was heartened to find at last a leader whose courage matched his conscience.
Lincoln described Sumner as " my idea of a bishop," and used to consult him as an embodiment of the conscience of the American people.
Hence arise infinite and inextricable difficulties which obstruct the study of canon law; an immense field for controversy and litigation; a thousand perplexities of conscience; and finally contempt for the laws."' We know how the Vatican council had to separate without approaching the question of canonical reform; but this general desire for a recasting of the ecclesiastical code was taken up again on the initiative of Rome.
The poet thus fairly inherited his conscience, religious exaltation and spirit of protest.
As early as August 1862, Cardinal Wiseman publicly censured the Review; and when in 1864, after D0111nger's appeal at the Munich Congress for a less hostile attitude towards historical criticism, the pope issued a declaration that the opinions of Catholic writers were subject to the authority of the Roman congregations, Acton felt that there was only one way of reconciling his literary conscience with his ecclesiastical loyalty, and he stopped the publication of his monthly periodical.
Lord Acton has left too little completed original work to rank among the great historians; his very learning seems to have stood in his way; he knew too much and his literary conscience was too acute for him to write easily, and his copiousness of information overloads his literary style.
And, thirdly, the sinner who cannot satisfy his conscience by these other methods is invited to open his grief to a minister of God's word.
Similarly, the sick man is to be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he feels his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.
Though cunning, he was destitute alike of foresight and of self-control; he could never discern the way in which his conduct would be judged by other men, because he lacked even the rudiments of a conscience.
It was fortunate that, just at the moment when parliamentary control was established over the state, circumstances should have arisen which made the majority ready to restore to the individual conscience that supremacy over religion which the medieval ecclesiastics had claimed for the corporation of the universal thurch.
If he had now resigned rather than demean himself by Icting against his conscience, it is by no means unlikely that he would have been recalled to power before many years were over.
The disadvantage of the possession of too strait a conscience in politics was never more dismally illustrated.
On the other side the conscience of the North was excited by a passionate desire to wipe out the blot of slavery.
He gave the institutions, which had been thus established, the full benefit of the assistance which the government was prepared to afford to board schools, on their adopting a conscience clause under which the religious susceptibilities of the parents of children were protected.
The introduction to his first volume of Actes et paroles, ranging in date from 1841 to 1851, is dated in June 1875; it is one of his most earnest and most eloquent appeals to the conscience and intelligence of the student.
We are not exhilarated by the cheerfulness, the polish, the fine manners of Bolingbroke, for Burke had an anxious conscience, and was earnest and intent that the good should triumph.
They did not deny that fasting might be a good thing, nor did they maintain that the church or the authority might not ordain fasts, though they deprecated the imposition of needless burdens on the conscience.
While strongly discouraging the arbitrary multiplication of public or private fasts, the English Church seems to leave to the discretion of the individual conscience every question as to the manner in which the fasts she formally enjoins, are to be observed.
Free thought and liberty of conscience had indeed been pleaded for, on various grounds, in the century in which he lived.
It asserted the principles of civil equality and freedom of conscience, it reformed the criminal law, and laid down a just scheme of taxation.
At first they are little more than mere inventories of sins, with their appropriate ecclesiastical punishments; gradually cases of conscience come to be discussed and decided, and the basis is laid for that system of casuistry which reached its full development in the 14th and 15th centuries.
All acts of natural virtue are implicitly included within the scope of this law of nature; but in the application of its principles to particular cases - to which the term " conscience " should be restricted - man's judgment is liable to err, the light of nature being obscured and perverted by bad education and custom.
It is perhaps easy to understand how, in the crisis of 1640, when the ethico-political system of Hobbes first took written shape, a peace-loving philosopher should regard the claims of individual conscience as essentially anarchical, and dangerous to social well-being; but however strong might be men's yearning for order, a view of social duty, in which the only fixed positions were selfishness everywhere and unlimited power somewhere, could not but appear offensively paradoxical.
To meet this view Butler does not content himself, as is sometimes carelessly supposed, with insisting on the natural claim to authority of the conscience which his opponent repudiated as artificial; he adds a subtle and effective argument ad hominem.
Indeed, we may say that an egoist must be doubly self-regulative, since rational self-love ought to restrain not only other impulses, but itself also; for as happiness is made up of feelings that result from the satisfaction of impulses other than self-love, any over-development of the latter, enfeebling these other impulses, must proportionally diminish the happiness at which self-love aims. If, then, it be admitted that human impulses are naturally under government, the natural claim of conscience or the moral faculty to be the supreme governor will hardly be denied.
But has not self-love also, by Butler's own account, a similar authority, which may come into conflict with that of conscience?
But to Butler's more cautious mind the completeness of this harmony did not seem sufficiently demonstrable to be taken as a basis of moral teaching; he has at least to contemplate the possibility of a man being convinced of the opposite; and he argues that unless we regard conscience as essentially authoritative - which is not implied in the term " moral sense " - such a man is really bound to be vicious; " since interest, one's own happiness, is a manifest obligation."
Butler does not deny this, so far as mere claim to authority is concerned; 1 but he maintains that, the dictates of conscience being clear and certain, while the calculations of self-interest lead to merely probable conclusions, it can never be practically reasonable to disobey the former, even apart from any proof which religion may furnish of the absolute coincidence of the two in a future life.
This dualism of governing principles, conscience and self-love, in Butler's system, and perhaps, too, his revival of the Platonic conception of human nature as an ordered and governed community of impulses, is perhaps most nearly antici pated in Wollaston's Religion of Nature Delineated (1722).
There is another side of Shaftesbury's harmony which Butler was ultimately led to oppose in a more decided manner, - the opposition, namely, between conscience or the moral sense and the social affections.
In the Sermons, indeed (1729), Butler seems to treat conscience and calm benevolence as permanently allied though distinct principles, but in the Dissertation on Virtue, appended to the Analogy (1739), he maintains that the conduct dictated by conscience will often differ widely from that to which mere regard for the production of happiness would prompt.
Only in a secondary sense is approval due to certain " abilities and dispositions immediately connected with virtuous affections," as candour, veracity, fortitude, sense of honour; while in a lower grade still are placed sciences and arts, along with even bodily skills and gifts; indeed, the approbation we give to these is not strictly moral, but is referred to the " sense of decency or dignity," which (as well as the sense of honour) is to be distinguished from 1 In a remarkable passage near the close of his eleventh sermon Butler seems even to allow that conscience would have to give way to self-love, if it were possible (which it is not) that the two should come into ultimate and irreconcilable conflict.
In the case of our own conduct what we call conscience is really sympathy with the feelings of an imaginary impartial spectator.
Reid considers " regard for one's good on the whole " (Butler's self-love) and " sense of duty " (Butler's conscience) as two essentially distinct and co-ordinate rational principles, though naturally often comprehended under the one term, Reason.
This " pleasurable good-will," when the moral judgment relates to a man's own actions, becomes " the testimony of a good conscience - the purest and most valuable of all human enjoyments."
Similarly the notion of Conscience as a special faculty giving its pronouncements immediately and without reflection cannot be maintained in the face of modern psychological analysis and is untrue to the nature of moral judgment itself.
Cond and Coligny, who, having obtained liberty of conscience in January 1561, now demanded liberty of worship. The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal of Lorraine and Theodore Bean (September 1561), did not end in the agreement hoped for, and the duke of Guise so far abused its spirit as to embroil the French Calvinists with the German I
In later times the conception of conscience as an inward monitor is symptomatic of the same movement of thought.
The Sudan judicial codes, based in part on those of India and in part on the principles of English law and of Egyptian commercial law, provide for the recognition of " customary law " so far as applicable and " not repugnant to good conscience."
Dean's conscience, was taking some heat, too.
It is not a seared conscience that's lost all sensitivity.
Open inspection of the papers amply confirmed Judge Babington's conclusions and stirred the public conscience.
He had qualms of conscience.
Conscience is in four seven-lined stanzas.
He was always ready to protect the rights of conscience, whether they were claimed by Dissenters or Catholics, and the popular fury which led to the destruction of his house during the Gordon riots was mainly due to the fact that a Catholic priest, who was accused of saying Mass, had escaped the penal laws by his charge to the jury.
Of the three works which constitute together the full exposition of his interpretation of experience, la Conscience was published in 1889, Matiere et Memoire in 1896, and L'Evolution Creatrice in 1907.
The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.
Or, beginning from the other side; neither the reality which ideal thought reaches after, nor yet the reality which our conscience postulates, is the valid world of orderly thinking.
There are (a) given instinctive " propensions "; (b) a part of higher principles, " benevolence " and " rational self-love," equally valid with each other, though at times they may seem to conflict; (c) there is the master principle of conscience, which judges between motives, but does not itself constitute a motive to action.
This divinity "within a man," this "legislating faculty," which, looked at from one point of view, is conscience, and from another is reason, must be implicitly obeyed.
In popular usage "conscience" is generally understood to give intuitively authoritative decisions as regards the moral quality of single actions; this usage implicitly assumes that every action has an objective or intrinsic goodness or badness, which "conscience" may be said to discern much in the same way as the eye sees or the ear hears.
His object was not to dazzle by a conformity with the artificial rules of oratory, but to move the soul of the listener by a direct appeal to his conscience.
What lived in time belonged to eternity; the microcosm was the epitome of the macrocosm; the reason which reigned in man interpreted the law that was revealed in conscience and the power which governed human destiny, while the freedom which man realized was the direct negation both of necessity and of the operation of any fortuitous cause in the cosmos.
But though he formulated no system of philosophy, and seemed to show the influence now of Plato, now of Kant, or of German thought as filtered through the brain of Coleridge, he was, like his American master, associate and friend, steadily optimistic, idealistic, individualistic. The teachings of William Ellery Channing a little before, as to the sacred inviolability of the human conscience - anticipating the later conclusions of Martineau - really lay at the basis of the work of most of the Concord transcendentalists and contributors to The Dial, of whom Alcott was one.
She rejected with resolute dignity the intercession of French envoys for the life of the queen-dowager of France; she allowed the sentence of death to be proclaimed and welcomed with bonfires and bellringing throughout the length of England; she yielded a respite of twelve days to the pleading of the French ambassador, and had a charge trumped up against him of participation in a conspiracy against her life; at length, on the 1st of February 1587, she signed the death-warrant, and then made her secretaries write word to Paulet of her displeasure that in all this time he should not of himself have found out some way to shorten the life of his prisoner, as in duty bound by his oath, and thus relieve her singularly tender conscience from the guilt of bloodshed.
Next year he published Le Pape, a vision of the spirit of Christ in appeal against the spirit of Christianity, his ideal follower confronted and contrasted with his nominal vicar; next year again La Pitie supreme, a plea for charity towards tyrants who know not what they do, perverted by omnipotence and degraded by adoration; two years later Religions et religion, a poem which is at once a cry of faith and a protest against the creeds which deform and distort and leave it misshapen and envenomed and defiled; and in the same year L'Ane, a paean of satiric invective against the past follies of learned ignorance, and lyric rapture of confidence in the future wisdom and the final conscience of the world.
With such followers he made the constitution of 1876 and all the laws of the monarchy, putting a limited franchise in the place of universal suffrage, curtailing liberty of conscience, rights of association and of meeting, liberty of the press, checking democracy, obliging the military to abstain from politics, conciliating the Carlists and Catholics by his advances to the Vatican, the Church and the religious orders, pandering to the protectionists by his tariff policy, and courting abroad the friendship of Germany and Austria after contributing to the marriage of his king to an Austrian princess.