The Individual Conscience and the Law

Abstract

THE question before us seems to many minds to have been clearly and definitely answered long since. Conscience and law! were not their respective positions marked in indelible characters when the words were uttered: Render unto Cesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's? Conscience has its own domain, the wholly interior world of beliefs and thoughts, feelings and wills. In that domain it is sole mistress; it is amenable only to the powers that it accepts. Around this domain rises a wall of brass which no external power has the right to break down, and which, indeed, no force can really undermine. In theory, even in reality, as a final resort, conscience is inviolable. Outside the sanctuary of conscience, however, stretches the region of the outer life, of manifestations and actions. Here, law is sovereign, quite as independent of conscience as this latter, in its own realm, is independent of law. There are two worlds and there are two empires; nothing could be clearer or more logical than this economy of the universe. In practice, however, we encounter difficulties. The system is based on the radical distinction between thought and action: the latter wholly material and exterior, the former wholly interior and spiritual. What, then, is to be said of the written and the spoken word? What is to be said of instruction? Are these simply thoughts, or are they, even now, acts, and, as such, subject to law? The difficulty is solved by endeavouring to find out, in each given case, whether the fact resembles more closely a pure thought or an external manifestation. Nature indeed always offers