A UNIT OF MORAL POWER

We are now in the sphere of conscience. The actor is a unit of moral powers. And the thing done is therefore the work of a sole agency whose sovereign prerogatives are put to an interchangeable use between all the members, which, in turn, serve it in accordance with the scheme of subordination which prescribes their functions. However, there can be no personal responsibility until the actor has consciously informed himself of the constraint, or urgency, which signalizes the authority of moral convictions. He must be informed of their awful significance. And he must affirm, or opine, that he is bound by his conceptions of right and wrong, even though he may outrage conviction by bad conduct. The question comes up here : Whence this obligation in morals ; on what does it found ? Our answer is that man, as a unit of power over conduct, frames a judgment of the good or bad qualities in his acts, and conceives, or affirms, himself to be Personally responsible for their commission. And this power to value acts as good or bad, places him in a rank to himself among terrestrial creatures. But to be more explicit: Because of his uniquely human gifts, he is constrained (as a discoverer of moral sanctions and their stress)to act from a conviction of his personal responsibility for their employment. For, once seeing their obligatory character, the force of the obligation is felt to be a personal motor in all that pertains to conduct.

Why a conception of the moral qualities of our acts turns up a further conception, that we are personally under bonds to them, is a matter of curious interest. In other language, why does a rational witnessing of individual acts of right and wrong come back to us, as persons open to their moral pressure ?An answer might be gathered from previous discussions. We are referring to that astounding transcendence of human reason by which we alone of all God's creatures can grasp the idea of a righteous power seated in every moral conception. For he who discovers such knowledge, discovers its

power over conduct; judging himself, and others, by what he and they do ; even appraising his very thoughts by the potencies which distinguish, and emphasize, their diverse characters.

I take it that you are now aware of the estimate I put on the mind of animals. I spoke of their perspicacity being as clear as that of man, allowance being made for their narrower horizon. They reason quite knowingly, within their confined outlook. They have even ends and aims which they pursue, but they stop short of the Heaven-born distinctions, discovered and affirmed by the broader and deeper intellectual vision of man, in virtue of which distinctions, he comes to know of an austerity in moral sanctions utterly unknown to feebler intelligences. They lack power of mind to frame an articulate conception of the divine mission of right to rule in the realm of morals. And it is for this

reason that moral power, as both constructive and conceptive of the equities ,beauties, humanities, and duties, and culture of a human soul, is unknown to them. But wherein lies the diversely marked superiority of man " seeing that he also is hedged in with limitations, as inviolable as those of animals ?For, neither can demit one iota of what is peculiar to himself, or to itself. But man has committed to him the strictly human charge of doing right or wrong, in deference to a giftlier conception of the steps and extent of the obligation. He discovers the meum and tuum of our humanities, and in acquiring this knowledge he acquiresits obligatory sanctions. It is to be remembered, however, that, on a first acquaintance with this human meum and tuum, the mine and thine, the right and wrong of morals, etc., we see only the actions of the different actors. This alone is our first seeing. And let me add that it is just here that the ideas of right and wrong begin to emerge in and through their concrete relations. And it occurs in this way : On one seeing himself, and others, doing acts involving questions of mine and thine, right and wrong, he is in the attitude of conceiving the moral character of those acts. For he remarks that they are accredited by a certain tone which claims and enforces precedence over all other actions and among all men. But the thing seen is not wholly an apprehension of right and wrong in the concrete, nor even a judgment of the moral quality of the act. It is more. A further judgment of approval or censure of the act, as intrinsically good or bad in the doer, conies in to affirm the latter's responsibility for its commission.

It is to be observed, too, that the one who sits in judgment, and approves, or reprehends, is having himself so informed of the qualities in such particulars of conduct, that he can side with, or against, them. But this is an act of choice, or the affirmation of personal preference, on evidence for it. We conclude, therefore, that when one sees, or does, an

act which he conceives to be right or wrong, he is in fact adjudging himself to be a right or wrong doer; affirming choice, and, at the same time, visiting upon himself the moral reprisals of self approval, or rebuke. For the judgment is that, in as much as he is the doer of the act, he is to be personally commended, or else reprehended. In either case, he is upheld by that fealty to himself, and the accepted stress of his moral convictions by which he asserts a personal preference, or sides with what he does, and so commends

 his own acts, as good or bad, in the light of his moral conceptions, ever thus, from the hour of responsibility, when one reaches a judgment of right or wrong, he is also affirming one of praise or censure (which is an affirmative or negative choice),and he is therefore also affirming his personal responsibility for choice and conduct.