A Man's Value to Society Part 7
IX
CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER
Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better man within him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeper convictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of this whisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect so magisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession.
The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify the revenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for her outrageous sins. But soon pa.s.sed from memory that hateful night when the blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxury by day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to be forgotten. Soon a full year had pa.s.sed over the palace with its silken seclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, a courtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter, whose name and fame were ringing through the land.
Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who is He? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly, conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror the despot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer's finger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow--a silent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod's conscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting a hooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale and drowned deed." The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastly atrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee--the agnostic of antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away.
Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding a thousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Then were fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of a king, we would find it full of scars and black wounds." For no slave was ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed by his conscience.
Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must be reckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. None may deny the condemnation that weighed upon the soul of Herod or Judas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's G.o.d. All the great, from aeschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distant province, he had taken the life and property of his master, and thereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had never been suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemn him to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here is the student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old and honored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered head from morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteen years before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despite the grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain, conscience bade him expiate his breach of filial piety. And here is Channing, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted his stick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But in that moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong." In his fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother's arms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered: "Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of G.o.d. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to that little voice."
Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man in the jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated.
Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and serene. "Great G.o.d," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.
Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest thought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity.
If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty--to pain us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as G.o.d has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the world itself is but a bubble. For G.o.d himself is in conscience lending it authority.
We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they have portrayed and a.n.a.lyzed the essential facts of man's moral life.
That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in his "Les Miserables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped convict. Going into a distant province he a.s.sumed a new name and began life again. He invented a machine, ama.s.sed wealth, became mayor of the town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he was tried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison--this time for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys.
Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? By confessing his ident.i.ty and going himself.
In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room.
Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through the trees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he go back again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must he resign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, so useful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life for this old man? Were not these two young wards whom he was supporting more than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go to the galleys.
Then with muscles tense as steel, with jugular vein all swollen and purple, Jean Valjean took the two candlesticks given him by the Bishop, his thorn cane, the coin taken from the boy, and cast all upon the blazing coals. Soon the flames had licked all up. Then Victor Hugo says: "Jean Valjean heard a burst of internal laughter." What was it in him jeering and mocking? At midnight from sheer exhaustion the mayor slept. Dreaming, he seemed to be in a hall of justice where an old man was being tried. There were roses in the vase, only sin had bleached the crimson petals gray. The sunlight came through the window, only sin had washed the color from the sunbeam and left the golden rays ashen pale. All the people were silent. At length an officer touched the mayor and said: "Do you know you have been dead a long while? Your body lives, but you died when you slew your conscience." Suddenly a voice said: "Jean Valjean, you may melt the candlestick, burn your clothes, change your face, but G.o.d sees you."
Afterward came a second burst of internal laughter. Then the mayor arose swiftly, took his horse, drove hard all night and reached the distant village to enter the courtroom just as the old man was about to be sent to the galleys. Ascending the prisoner's dock, he confessed his ident.i.ty. Victor Hugo tells us that in that hour the judge and the lawyer saw a strange light upon the mayor's face, and felt a light within dazzling their hearts. It was the same light that fell on the German monk's face when before the Emperor at Worms he said: "I cannot and will not recant!" and then boldly fronted death. Conscience shining through made Luther's face luminous, as it had made the face of Moses before him!
As obedience to the behests of conscience has always yielded happiness and formed character, so disobedience has always destroyed manhood.
The great novelists have exhibited the deterioration of character in their hero as beginning with a sin against the sense of duty. In Romola, George Eliot exhibits t.i.to as a gifted and ideal youth. The orphan child was adopted by the Greek scholar, who lavished upon him all the gifts of affection, all the culture and embellishments of the schools, all the comforts of a beautiful home; and when the longing for foreign travel came upon the youth the foster-father could not deny him, but took pa.s.sage for t.i.to and himself and sailed for Alexandria. But the motto of t.i.to's life was, get all the pleasure you can, avoid all the pain. Soon the old scholar became a clog and a burden. One night, conscience battled for its life with t.i.to. At midnight the youth arose, unbuckled from his father's waist the leather belt stuffed with jewels, and fled into the night, leaving the gray-haired man among strangers whose language he could not speak.
Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person, his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his apt.i.tude for affairs, won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one of the n.o.blest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautiful youth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautiful young tiger. t.i.to had no conscience toward Romola, no conscience toward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward the patriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitor toward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautiful body; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; and so conscience becomes an avenger upon t.i.to. When the keystone goes from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour when conscience first drove t.i.to into the Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and G.o.d cannot afford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is G.o.d's avenger.
Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three of the seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world's greatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. The masterpieces of Sophocles and aeschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Goethe and Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed, hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting him into the open sky.
Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, is conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Mult.i.tudes suppose it to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and there is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty, testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when G.o.d made man, He implanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of inner mind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty.
It includes many faculties, and is complex in nature. It has an intellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable of education. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill aged persons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appease the G.o.ds. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in inst.i.tutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and skillfully done, it won honor--a condition of things that still prevails in some sections.
Never since man stepped foot upon this planet has there been a time when conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice and regent of G.o.d.
Since, therefore, conscience partakes of this divine nature and speaks as an oracle, what are its uses and functions? Primarily, the moral sense furnishes a standard and tests actions for righteousness or iniquity. To its judgment-seat comes reason, with its purposes and ambitions. When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphire or ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact with selfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled its instruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in to freshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminous hours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, how beautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revolt from iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostril from filth!
Conscience has also relations to judgment. It p.r.o.nounces upon the inner motive that colors the deeds, for it is the motive within that makes the actions without right or wrong. When Coleridge, the schoolboy, was going along the street thinking of the story of Hero and Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the h.e.l.lespont, he threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his hand struck the pocket of a pa.s.ser-by and knocked out a purse. The outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that inner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and sent young Coleridge to college. Thus, the philosopher tells us, the motive made what was outwardly wrong to be inwardly right.
Memory, too, is influenced by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up all our yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penman writing with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression and recording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire.
Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. Sir William Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at four years of age. When a few brief summers and winters had pa.s.sed over his head, the language of far-off Russia had pa.s.sed completely out of the child's mind. Seventy years afterward, stricken with his last illness, in his delirium the man spoke with perfect ease in the language of childhood. In moments of extreme excitement, when ships go down or death is imminent, conscience doth so quicken the mind that all the deeds and thoughts of an entire career are reviewed within a few minutes. Scholars have been deeply impressed with this unique fact.
Seeking to interpret it, Walter Scott takes us into the castle where a foul murder was committed. So deeply did the red current stain the floor that, though the servants scrubbed and scrubbed and planed and planed, still the dull red stains oozed up through the oaken planks.
This is the great Scotchman's way of saying that our deeds stain through the very fiber and substance of the soul.
Looking backward, we see only here and there a peak of remembrance standing out midst the sea of forgetfulness, even as the islands in the West Indies stand out midst the ocean. But each of these island peaks represents a submerged continent. Drain off the sea, and the mountains ease off toward the foothills and the hills toward the great plains that make up the hidden land. Thus the isolated memories of the past are all united, and will at length stand forth in perfect revelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes, even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the pen in the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, though juries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers and never sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul's king be deposed from its throne, to-morrow it will ascend to the judgment-seat and lift the scepter. For conscience represents G.o.d and acts in His stead.
Consider the workings of conscience in daily life. The ideal man is he who is equally conscientious toward intellect and affection, toward plan and purpose. But in practical life men are Christian only in spots and departments. The soul may be likened unto a house, and conscience is the furnace thereof. Sometimes the householder turns the heat into the sitting-room and parlor, but in the other rooms he turns off the warm currents of air. Sometimes heat is turned into the upper rooms, while the lower rooms are cold. Thus conscience, that should govern all faculties alike, is largely departmental in its workings.
Some men are conscientious toward Sunday, but not toward the week days. On Sunday they sing like saints, on Monday they act like demons.
On the morning of St. Bartholomew's ma.s.sacre, Charles IX was conscientious toward the cathedral and attended ma.s.s during three hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his fellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb.
In the Middle Ages conscience worked toward outer forms. In those days the baron and priest made a contract. The general led his peasants forth to burn and pillage and kill, and the priest absolved the murderers for five per cent of the profits. Men were very conscientious toward absolution, but not at all toward the neighbor's flocks and barns. In others conscience is largely superst.i.tion.
Recently an officer of our army found himself sitting beside his host at a table containing thirteen guests. The soldier, who perhaps would have braved death on the battle-field, was p.r.i.c.ked by his conscience for sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he was afraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great G.o.d who makes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand as sparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the G.o.d of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awful sinners against the law of twelve chairs or fourteen.
Singularly enough, now and then an individual is conscientious toward some charm, as in the case of a merchant who presently discovered that he had left his buckeye at home. He had carried this for twenty years.
Had he forgotten to pray he would not have gone home to fall upon his knees. Nature and G.o.d were in the merchant's counting-room, but not the buckeye. So he hurriedly left his office to bring back the agent that secured all his success and prosperity.
Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law of right is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. They exile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionship with the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until they become strangers to her. But conscience does not p.r.i.c.k them. Home, friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected--but the business, never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward the home. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind and delightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying, their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, good father, good provider." But they have no conscience toward the street.
They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy and avaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about the timber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says, "That is the tree I want," and the woodsman fells it and squares it for the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for his finishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimate nature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different in the great world of business and ambition. The giant takes one man for the foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; he selects another man and uses him up, building his substance into the structure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon his flocks--so much wool to be sheared.
Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral and spiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious toward yesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field light broke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope." And every Sunday since that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is not conscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience for to-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that old experience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten years ago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring, or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day's loaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna good that is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whose conscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements.
With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. These are they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. The good deacon sits in his pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs of election or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up to sixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight, saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fat things." Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fed on the dry bones of logic.
Sometimes conscience affects only the feelings. Fifty years ago there was a type numbering hundreds of thousands of persons whose religion was largely emotional. In great camp-meetings filled with a warm atmosphere men showed at their best. The sunny spot of all the year was the month of revival meetings. Then they experienced the luxury of spiritual enjoyment. They lived on the top of some Mount of Transfiguration, while the world below was thundering with wickedness and tormented with pa.s.sion. Men became drunk with emotions. Religion was an exquisite form of spiritual selfishness. Afterward came an era when men learned to trans.m.u.te feelings into thoughts and fidelities toward friendships and business and duty. At other times conscience has had unique manifestations in fidelity toward creeds. Now one denomination and now another, forgetting to be conscientious in meeting together for days and weeks to plan in the interests of the pauper, the orphans, the tenement house or the foreign district in the great city, will through months of excitement exhibit conscience toward some doctrinal symbol. Witness the recent upheaval about inspiration. As water bubbling up through the spring was once rain that fell from the sky, so the truth coming through the lips of poet or prophet was first breathed into the heart by G.o.d. Recently a good professor thought more emphasis should be laid upon the human spring.
But his opponents thought the emphasis should be placed upon the sky, from which the rain fell. In the broil about the nature of the water, the spring itself was soiled, much mud stirred up, until mult.i.tudes wholly forgot the spring, and many knew not whether there was any water of life.
But conscience in some, means fidelity to what man and G.o.d did--not what G.o.d is doing or will do. When the flowing sap under the stimulus of the sun causes the tree to grow and splits the bark, men rejoice that the bark is rent and that new and larger growths must be inserted. Sometimes a child, long feeble and sickly, enters upon a period of very rapid growth. Soon the boy's old clothes are too small, and so is his hat. But what if the parents should remember only that the clothes and hat came from some famous pattern? What if in their zeal to preserve the hat they should put an iron band about the boy's forehead and never permit it to increase so that the hat would not fit? What if they should put a strait-jacket about the chest to restrain the stature? This would show great zeal toward the hat and the coat, but meanwhile what is to become of the boy? Strange that men should be so conscientious toward an intellectual symbol, but forget to give liberty to other men's consciences who day and night seek to please G.o.d and be true to their beliefs. Thus in a thousand ways conscience is partial and fragmentary in its workings. Only one full-orbed man has ever trod our earth!
G.o.d's crowning gift to man is the gift of conscience. Reason is a n.o.ble and kingly faculty, turning reveries into orations and conversations into books. Imagination is a stately and divine gift, turning thoughts into poems and blocks of stone into statues. Great is the power of an eloquent tongue instructing men, restraining, inspiring, stimulating vast mult.i.tudes. Great are the joys of memory, that gallery stored with pictures of the past. But there is no genius of mind or heart comparable to a vigorous conscience, magisterial, clear-eyed, wide-looking. He who gave all-comprehending reason, all-judging reason, reserved his best gift to the last--then gave the gift of conscience.
Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safely through forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong, pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is his compa.s.s. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but the voyager yet may be saved if only the compa.s.s is kept. In time of danger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his hand or foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friends and outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It is the soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of G.o.d. Instructed, guided, loved, and redeemed by Jesus Christ, he who while living is at peace with his Master and with his conscience will, when dying, find himself at peace with his G.o.d.
VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT
"Like other gently nurtured Boston boys, Wendell Phillips began the study of law. Doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the n.o.ble youth of every country and time. Musing over c.o.ke and Blackstone, perhaps he saw himself succeeding Ames and Otis and Webster, the idol of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the elegant ease, and the cultivated conservatism of Ma.s.sachusetts. * * * But one October day he saw an American citizen a.s.sailed by a furious mob in the city of James Otis for saying with James Otis that a man's right to liberty is inherent and inalienable. As the jail doors closed upon Garrison to save his life, Garrison and his cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. With the setting of that October sun, vanished forever the career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary ambition, which the genius and the accomplishments of Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the long-awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned and forsaken, that cowering and friendless client was wronged and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and understood."--_Oration on Wendell Phillips by George Wm.
Curtis._
X
VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT
Every community holds a few happy and buoyant souls, that are so sustained by inner hope and outer prosperity as to seem the elect children of good fortune. These are they who are born only to the best things, for whom, as life goes on, the years do but increase happiness and success. For other men happiness is occasional, and life offers now and then a bright interval, even as an open glade is found here and there in the dark forest. Among these sunny souls, dwelling midst constant prosperity, let us hasten to include that youth to whom Christ made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature, his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace and indescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth, too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease had not enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed pa.s.sed through the fierce fires of temptation, but had come out with spotless garments.
Beholding him, Christ loved him; nor could it have been otherwise.
Some men we force ourselves to like. For reasons of finance or social advantage, men ignore their faults, while cherishing a secret dislike.