III.

CONSCIENCE, INTUITION, AND INTERIOR ILLUMINATION.

The three terms which head this chapter are often used indiscriminately, without much if any attempt so far to disengage them one from another as to cause them to convey definitely distinct ideas to the mind; it seems therefore helpful at the outset to make an endeavor to differentiate their meanings clearly. The word conscience though a very common term is very rarely analyzed, but no sooner do we divide it into the two words con and science than we find that it necessarily signifies what we know collectively or concretely or what we all know together. The syllable con and the noun science need to be considered first apart and then together, in order to lead to a clear understanding of what must have originally been the thought of those lexicographers who introduced conscience into the dictionary. When we speak of cons as distinct from pros we mean arguments against instead of for, but when we use such words as congregation, consociation and other terms of kindred import we intend to suggest co-operation or confederation, i. e., more than one, generally quite a considerable number of persons (ten or more) working together with a common end in view and united in the bonds of intellectual and moral fellowship. Individual conscience is properly the sum of individual knowledge, which the word science signifies. A social or corporate conscience is the sum of the knowledge possessed by a community. It is therefore equally correct to speak of private and public or of particular and general conscience. Is conscience or the sum of knowledge a matter for education? is often asked. Of course it must be if by education we mean development, but not if education is degraded in our esteem to the base level of something nearly approaching cramming. Conscientiousness is one of the commodities of the brain expressed through one of the organs clearly discernible through the skull and easily traced by any or all who have even a superficial knowledge of phrenology or who can delineate character by means of cranial diagnosis.

This organ like all others contracts or develops, expands or shrivels accordingly as it is stimulated to increased expression or permitted to become dormant through lack of exercise. Though conscience may be determinable as to its essential nature or distinctive quality, no one is justified in stating that it is equally developed in all persons; therefore, two or more persons following equally the dictates of their own consciences may display very different and widely unequal degrees of moral excellence.

If one person is highly conscientious while another is far less so, it is but reasonable to declare that the conscientious act of the one will be a very much higher or more truly moral act than the equally conscientious act of the other; i. e., the one who has undergone but slight expansion in the region of conscientiousness may be as conscientious as the other intentionally, though the actual conduct of the one might be repellant to the moral feeling of the other. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him the non-action or reverse action is sin, but without knowledge there can not be the responsibility that comes only with knowledge. The foregoing proposition suffices to account in a thoroughly logical manner for very much that frequently causes great embarrassment among such as listen to controversies concerning the nature and functions of conscience without having reached anything like a clear decision of their own. Wherever there is room for controversy there is assuredly some truth on both sides of the debate; neither the one who takes the affirmative nor the one who takes the negative ever being wholly in the right, for self-evident propositions or axiomatic certainties such as go to make up the multiplication table do not admit of discussion. Debatable ground must be to a certain extent terra incognita, or undiscovered country. Honest debaters are explorers seeking fresh supplies of truth rather than priggish egotists vainly imagining that their bucketful of information on a given subject exhausts the reservoir or ocean of ascertainable knowledge.

Conscience is an infallible guide to its possessor so far as it extends, just as mathematical knowledge is infallible to the extent that one possesses it, but no further. Because a child knows that 12×12=144 does not prove that the same child can give a correct answer to the examiner’s question: What is 13 times 13? Conscience may be compared to knowledge of the multiplication table, which everybody learns as far as 12 times 12, but often no further. Questions may need to be decided requiring answers to such advanced queries as what is 83 times 947? And though there is an answer to the more advanced as well as to the less advanced inquiry, it by no means follows that because you can reply accurately to the one you know the answer to the other.

Here comes in the doctrine of the infallibility of ascertained truth and the companion doctrine of the limitless progress in the discovery of truth possible to all humanity. Truth is necessarily unalterable in character but our apprehension of it is necessarily progressive; therefore, though our knowledge of truth can not alter, it enlarges. This distinction between alteration and enlargement is surely a vital and most important one.

An architect designs a building say seven stories in height; he submits his plans to a builder who employs workmen to erect the edifice in exact accord with the predetermined plan; this they do, continuously erecting one story upon another till the seventh story is finished and the roof put on. Digging for the foundation is the first stage of the process, roofing in the structure is the last. Between the first and the last there must be many stages of the work arrived at, each in successive order, but no one process is any more important or better than any other, seeing that all are alike necessary to the completion of the pile. In like manner we are all building our temple of character; raising the house from its foundation upward, step by step, logically and consecutively, for in no other way can the temple be upreared.

Our conscience is not by any means so large in development at the beginning as at the end of this process, for only as we practically build do we evolve our inherent or involved ability to acquire knowledge. Potentially we do not change but actually we grow constantly, and as the lower stages must be passed through as we journey toward the higher the degree of light obtainable below is far less than that which we shall clearly discern as we mount above.

Faulty because inadequate, as all illustrations must be, analogies frequently help to suggest a truth otherwise obscure. Our illustration of the gradual building of a structure is at least suggestive and may serve the useful end of helping some incipient thinkers along the road of reasoning to a point where they will be able to revise their terminology or at least retranslate it, so that “an accusing conscience,” “a guilty conscience” and similar phrases will mean something far more definite than they may have signified hitherto.

Conscience can not be guilty, but conscience does upbraid. Through the very act of upbraiding it bids us to rise to higher moral levels; it should therefore be regarded far more in the light of a monitor than in that of an accuser. The doctrine of evolution which is now applied to morals and religion fully as much as to purely intellectual and physical development has threatened to make complete havoc of all time-honored theologic views of conscience, for instead of conscience appearing as it formerly appeared as the direct voice of God upbraiding rebellious man by reason of his transgressions, it is relegated to a position of equality with other human faculties and along with all the rest is coming to be regarded as simply a product of education or of evolution.

On closer examination we shall, however, discover that only the harsh and forbidding phases of the old idea are becoming obsolete. Such pleasing phrases as “A good conscience,” “A conscience void of offense,” and many others of similar import are to be constantly encountered in the course of Paul's epistles, from which letters the entire body of orthodox Christianity has been deduced. Paul is a much overrated as well as underrated man. To the eyes of his devoted admirers this remarkable Saul of Tarsus ranks fully as high as, if not higher than, even John the beloved disciple, while to those who are distinctly unfriendly to his claims he appears as a cruel fanatic, his fanatic cruelty being just as evident on the one hand after his conversion to Christianity as it was on the other prior to his change of intellectual front and moral aspect.

Paul's views on conscience like all his other opinions are various; he can not be other than uneven in the expression of his sentiments, for he is too intrepid a character to be a calm, dispassionate philosopher, and only the utterly unprejudiced or entirely dispassionate can so calmly and clearly weigh all matters submitted to their judgment that their views on every subject, though not infallible, are at any rate sane. With the Paul type of individual, life is a conflict, the world a battle ground; fleshly lusts are constantly warring against the soul, therefore what is known as conscience plays an intensely real and sometimes a cruelly formidable part in the experiences of such a person’s interior or subjective existence.

It is interesting to note that Paul's letters contain numerous allusions to bodily infirmities, and his pathetic mention of “a thorn in the flesh” is a characteristic instance of how keenly he felt his physical derangements.

As so very large a portion of the modern Christian doctrine concerning conscience has been derived from the Pauline epistles, it is well to remember that their author was by no means a perfect type of vigorous, healthy manhood, and though at least four of those epistles are beyond doubt “genuine” in the scholastic or critical sense, it by no means therefore follows that the teaching they contain is untinctured with unduly pessimistic views of life. We are living in days when bodily and mental action and reaction are being analytically considered as never before, and though many physiologists attribute altogether too much to the influence of the flesh upon the spirit, there are not lacking those among metaphysicians who are too narrowly exclusive in their dealing with mental states, seeing that they entirely overlook reflex action in their passionate zeal for the honor of the cult of mental healing.

Primarily it is always true that mental states are responsible for physical conditions, but so many questions pertaining to heredity and outside influence upon sensitive natures must be taken into account in addition to one’s own mental activity that a wholesale statement of an utterly unqualified character is apt to be misleading.

Such eminent women as Harriet Martineau and others equally conscientious in the highest moral sense did not hesitate to attribute a large portion of their mental despondency to physical disabilities, while the noble English preacher, Frederic Robertson, told his congregation that when he was suffering acutely from physical distemper he saw everything as through a thick, black crepe veil.

How frequently it occurs that people condemn themselves for the commission of all manner of crimes of which they are innocent by reason of the disordered states of their physical organisms! Conscience and health are vitally related, and one can not be fairly treated without considering the other. It is far juster as a rule to attribute wrong-doing alike in children and adults to illness (and then seek to aid them on the road to health) than it ever can be to resort to ferocious punishments which are unmistakable souvenirs of barbarism even though intelligent people are not found wanting who sanction and advise them.

When, however, benevolently-disposed people advocate barbaric measures it is never because they prefer such measures to milder means, but always by virtue of their belief (which is false) that no better way exists for protecting society or reforming the aggressor. When you say to some people that it would be better to appeal to the consciences of evil-doers, their answer is apt to be the manifestly unfair and unkind one—“Such people have no consciences.” Truly the consciences of such are dormant, possibly embryotic, but germs of conscience at any rate are theirs. Much confusion exists in many places concerning the attitude which a conscientious person feels called upon to take in a disputed religious matter where cruel persecution of others is frequently involved. Consciences may be enlightened by reason, or unenlightened; therefore the act of a conscientious person is largely determined by his intelligence, though the motive which prompts the act belongs to conscience per se.

In days of fierce passionate struggle for the ascendency of some particular dogma against all opposition, conscientious fanatics may burn and imprison “heretics,” believing they are doing God and humanity a righteous service. Such people are ignorant and belligerent, and have carried ignorance and belligerence into the field of religious controversy. They are unreasoning; therefore, while they speak of acting conscientiously, we shall find them too much blinded by prejudice and too much excited by partisan feeling ever seriously to question the right or wrong of their intrepid acts.

It is at this point that we would take decided issue with many gifted orators and writers concerning the place occupied by conscience in the work of persecution. In many a professedly religious person strong animal appetites are simply held in check by the command of a creed, but they are not conquered; therefore whenever the subterfuge can be resorted to that the cause of religion will be served by indulging those passions to the utmost, they are given unrestricted freedom and in the name of religion brutality is enthroned. In war times the savage instinct to go out and kill something is let loose to a terrible extent, and even though some of the causes leading up to war are justifiable, war itself is nothing other than a venting of the lowest spleen in human nature.

We very much prefer the doctrine that there are different degrees in the unfoldment of conscience as manifested by different individuals, and that conscience may be spoken of in terms of more or less, than the theory that conscience itself is ever unethical.

Turning from conscience to Intuition we pass to decidedly higher ground and reach a plane of thought where all the doubtful workings of what may or may not be correctly designated conscience are left far below. Intuition however is a vaguely translated word, though its etymology is plain. It is simply tuition with the prefix in. All ordinary training through the senses might rightly be termed extuition, as the tutor is generally one who relies altogether upon external sources of information and employs equally exterior means to reach the understanding of the pupil. It is in the school of Plato rather than in that of Aristotle that we learn of the workings of intuition.

The dæmon of Socrates need not have been an extraneous guardian spirit, but may well be considered as the “higher self” or anima divina of the great philosopher. Plato, the faithful scribe and devoted disciple of his illustrious teacher, though he pays ample tribute to the influence exerted by his personal master, goes very much further than could any mere follower or imitator in expanding the Socratic theory. Innate ideas are not acceptable to the materialistic reasoner, therefore the typical West which is essentially materialistic in its mode of thought and action has taken very kindly to the views of Aristotle, while Plato has been regarded chiefly as a classic dreamer, a master of style, but not a practical guide for the young thinkers of Europe or America.

The East, essentially mystical and contemplative, recognizes intuition and along with it telepathy, psychometry and all else that the West is investigating at the present time with more or less of thoroughness. It is, however, in the spiritual region of consciousness that intuition finds its stronghold. Not only Emerson, but James Martineau as well, may be cited as an example of confidence in intuition, though the latter if not also the former has again and again proved himself a very close intellectual reasoner. Dr. Martineau’s great book, written as late if not later than his eightieth year, “The Seat of Authority in Religion,” is in one sense extremely rationalistic, as in some places it suggests the conclusions of Lecky in his “History of European Morals,” but when the final test is to be applied and the soul of the subject is to be revealed, Martineau, with consummate skill, uses rationalism to defeat agnosticism and comes forth solidly as an advocate of the religion of the indwelling spirit. Such a book is a noble study, and particularly helpful must it be to those who are tossed and buffeted upon the desolate ocean of doubt, unable to accept any historic evidences of Christianity or any other formulated system of theology, and yet deeply conscious within themselves of an indwelling spirit which not only makes for righteousness in the ethical sense, but also testifies to the reality of God and the certainty of human immortality. Martineau’s exquisite poem, which begins with the well-known lines:

“He who himself and God would know
Into the silence let him go
And lifting off pall after pall
Reach to the inmost depth of all,”

is one of the most beautiful specimens of modern sacred verse in any language. So noble a hymn agrees well with the conclusions reached by its scholarly author, who, fifty years ago, was a fine specimen of conservative English Unitarianism, as his old collection of hymns still used in some chapels abundantly testifies. Later on in his ministerial and literary career his “10 Services for Christian Worship” show still the conservative spirit permeated with a deep extra-theological spiritual consciousness, while his more recent hymnal, “Hymns of Prayer and Praise” (for the last twenty years a great favorite in England), breathes an ever-widening spirit and shows that the compiler of so fine a collection of sacred songs knew how to cull the finest gems of psalmody from all sources, and while not by any means avoiding distinctively Christian sentiment, could minister equally well to devout thinkers and aspiring hearts outside as well as inside any denominational fold.

The most vulnerable places in all ecclesiastical armors are the most external. Popular Biblical criticism even of the “higher” order deals almost entirely with matters which are after all historical rather than spiritual. Were there two or three Isaiahs? How many psalms out of the one hundred and fifty which constitute the accepted psalter were written by David? Who wrote the Fourth Gospel or the Epistle to the Hebrews? All such questions, which could be multiplied indefinitely, in no way touch the essence of religion, though they are of great historic interest and the answers to them are not to be despised. The new polychrome Bible is the latest, most ambitious and most useful of the many attempts yet made to familiarize the reading public with the results of late Biblical scholarship, but after examining specimen pages of this great new work—a monumental undertaking—one does not feel at all indisposed to turn again to Joseph Parker's “People's Bible” and listen to a pastoral rather than to a rigidly scientific rendering of the venerated text.

Suppose Joseph's coat was “long-sleeved” rather than many-colored, and Abraham's wife was afraid of being “laughed at” instead of expecting to be “laughed with,” as an old version phrased it, it is gratifying in the extreme to see how little difference all these changes and revisions make in the general trend of the moral instructions suggested by the narratives.

Intuitive people are apt to be somewhat regardless of textual criticism, as they do not depend on literature (even the best) for illumination. Authors before books; painters must exist prior to paintings; therefore, should all the venerable volumes now extant be looked upon as forgeries, the soul would not be dismayed because it never depends upon books for its enlightenment.

If the seat of authority in religion be not outward, but inward, intuitive and prophetic, not sacerdotal and ecclesiastic, then should all hierarchies be found to rest on sand; the solid rock of interior certitude would forever constitute the stable base for all abiding religious consciousness. The scholastic theologians have always admitted that God can be revealed to man in two ways, viz.: either by direct divine action within the individual human soul, or through the agency of an appointed hierarchy. Because individual perceptions differ, the plea is made that God has ordained the hierarchy; a claim easy to assert but very difficult to substantiate if we study facts of history.

Intuition of course varies in degree in different persons, also in the same people at various times; but though this may be taken as an accepted fact based on science and verified by innumerable experiences, such an admission by no means invalidates the claim of intuition itself to high regard as the chief factor in conveying truth to the innermost consciousness of humanity.

Intuition is in no sense whatever a substitute for reason—a faculty which it certainly is never destined to supplant—because reason is appealed to in all normal cases to act upon the information brought to it through intuition’s gateway. An illustration here may prove helpful. Picture to yourself an auditorium to which there are two entrances, one from the outer street, a busy public thoroughfare; the other from a college or private residence like a bishop’s house attached to a cathedral. Access is gained to the center of the audience-room through both apertures, but those who enter by these respective doors face while entering in opposite directions. Two sets of information can be given by these two distinct classes of people, who, if they are both intelligent and truthful, will say nothing contradictory to each other’s statements, though they will furnish news respectively which could only have been gained in the quarters whence they had come.

Question the spokesman of the one party concerning the affairs of the street, and he, fresh from the marts of trade, may readily acquaint you with the transactions of the marketplace though he can know absolutely nothing of the private or collegiate life to which he has not been admitted; the spokesman on the other side who has entered from the bishop’s palace or the seminary behind the church can give information of a totally different kind, but knows nothing of the outer world.

The testimony of the senses and also of intuition like that of these two sets of people can be submitted to the reason for analysis and application, but it must always continue to be the case that whatever enters the house where reason sits enthroned from the outside must pertain to the realm of sense, while demonstrations of spiritual truth can only enter through the gate that leads within.

It has been commonly supposed that, because intuition has been esoterically termed feminine and reason masculine, therefore females are more intuitive than males. This is not necessarily the case, though it is a recorded fact that more women than men have been hitherto distinguished by the possession and exercise of a very reliable and helpful intuitive faculty. Woman's quieter and more domestic mode of life has not militated against her intuitive development as it has against her brother's, and as it must always be the province of women to be the mothers of the race, and maternity greatly fosters the intuitive side of human nature, there will probably always remain a majority of intuitive women and of intellectual men until the stage in common growth is reached where there will be such an equalization of human development as the world hitherto has never realized or seen.

Business of an entirely secular kind is perforce conducted in an atmosphere not very highly conducive to spiritual culture; at the same time it needs to be enforced that we need not continue to be as blatantly materialistic in our business methods in future as we have been in the past and still are in the present.

Commerce, when it is righteous commerce, is no drawback to the leading of a noble moral life, and the day will surely come when no phase of spiritual experience will be hampered by engaging in any form of secular employment. But as yet the time has not fully come when business methods are spiritual methods, therefore only in occasional instances—marked exceptions to the general rule—do we find the leaders in commerce palpably dowered with a very large supply of intuition.

It must not be inferred from what has just been said that we are arguing against the introduction of intuitive guidance into the field specially occupied by worldly duties; on the contrary, our contention is that not unless and never until intuition inspires commerce will the business of the world be successfully accomplished.

Intuition is insight, seership, ability to detect motives and witness the operation of underlying causes which give forth physical effects. Consider, then, how great a boon would be conferred on honest workers and how greatly discomfited dishonorable schemers would be if insight, penetration, or interior discernment could throw a flashlight on the crooked dealings of “Jim the Penman” and his ilk. Of what use are letters of introduction, “gilt edged” or “A 1” references, unless one can be assured of their genuineness? And it is surely admitted everywhere that history has proved again and again that counterfeiting in many directions has been brought to such a pitch of perfection as to almost defy the skill of the most accomplished experts.

Intuition can never be enjoyed where prejudice of any sort prevails, for wherever there is present a fixed idea, an intuitive revelation, unless it accord therewith, is almost certain of rejection. The intuitive man or woman is transparently honest, keen, shrewd, discerning, but never in the least suspicious. Suspicion is allied to jealousy and many another vice and weakness, therefore Othello, who was suspicious, was deceived by the treacherous Iago; while Emilia, who was pure, was penetrative enough to know that Desdemona was entirely innocent of the fault of which she was cruelly accused. Shakespeare, in his Moor of Venice, has shown us very clearly how extremely liable to become deception’s prey is a suspicious spirit, because the willingness to accuse a person of a wrong on hearsay evidence gives proof of an undiscerning, undiscriminating temper.

Interior illumination is, if we may use such an expression, intuition raised to its highest power. Simple intuition may concern and often does concern matters of personal or private interest chiefly, but spiritual illumination is nothing less than a flooding of the understanding with celestial light to such an extent that dark problems become luminous; and, where once there was no guiding star above, the heavens have become radiant with the glory of the Star of Bethlehem and the air vocal with the songs of heaven's choristers.

In olden times there were three classes of acknowledged superior people, respectively designated Literati, Inspirati and Illuminati. The first were what we understand to-day by the literary fraternity, only by reason of literature being confined within very much narrower limits than at present; men of letters were rare birds in a sense in which they are certainly not rare to-day, albeit the highest type of literature is even now scarce and at a premium.

The second of the three classes mentioned contained all those singularly gifted people who furnish food for special thought and give opportunity for particular investigation by reason of their “psychical” endowments. The third class, and the third only, was composed of those who realized within themselves the truth of what some of our recent poets have referred to as “the inward light and living word.”

The first division embraces the lettered; the second, the specially “mediumistic;” the third, the divinely enlightened. All have their place and work; all are honorable, useful, and necessary if they are but faithful; but however much the world may be indebted to the two former classes for instruction, it would be vain to deny that only the third comprises such teachers of the race as deserve to rank as masters and who have learned to possess themselves at all times and in all ways.

Let no one think that earlier and feebler stages of attainment can safely be despised because the higher far transcends the lower in point of dignity and use alike. Those who have been faithful over a few things are promised rulership over much; those who have used one talent are soon found to possess two, while those who decline to honor a small trust or fulfill a trifling opportunity are after awhile deprived of the little they have scouted.

Fidelity to seemingly insignificant obligations is the certain stepping-stone to eventual illumination, for no matter how small a duty may appear it must never be considered unimportant. The true road to prophetic heights is traversed by all who in any capacity, no matter how humble or obscure, diligently live up to the highest truth perceived by them. The world’s standards of measurement are often radically false, therefore there are no exterior criteria whereby the adept of the ages can be judged. Illumination may radiate over the earth from a temporal throne as in the tradition of Zoroaster, or it may proceed from despised Nazareth as in the legend of the Christ. Wisdom is justified of all her children, regardless of their birthplaces or their occupation.

The story of the twelve apostles is marvelously impressive when read in the light of universal knowledge. Several of the disciples, who become apostles, are fishermen, and there is no hint in any one of the four Gospels that they relinquish their business after they have received illumination from on high. One apostle (Luke) is a physician, another (Matthew) is taken from the receipt of custom; he is therefore a tax collector: and in no instance are we told that occupation or previous training had aught to do with qualifications necessary for the work of an apostle. As the world’s population is made up of all varieties of people it is essential that all classes and descriptions should be reached by teachers specially competent in their respective fields of industry. The scholarship of Oxford or Cambridge is not needed for the east end of London, nor is the dialect of Whitechapel adapted to the drawing-rooms of Belgravia. Let us steer absolutely clear of attempted uniformity on which so many narrow-minded workers wreck their vessels and lose their fish. Unity of spirit we do require; uniformity of method is a drawback, not a help. Rejoicing in our special capacities to do useful service in some given direction (no matter what), we can heartily cooperate in heart with all sincere philanthropists the wide world over, and, if we are but absolutely faithful, illumination may assuredly be ours regardless altogether of our outward state.