Now, in
order not to lose sight of this all-important distinction, I shall
criticise Dr. Newman's rendering of the ordinary argument from Conscience
in each of these two points of views separately. To begin, then, with the
uncompounded ethical feelings.
Such emotions as attend the operation of conscience in those who follow its
light alone without any theories as to its supernatural origin, are all of
the character of _reasonable_ or _explicable_ emotions. Granting that
fellow-feeling has been for the benefit of the race, and therefore that it
has been developed by natural causes, certainly there is nothing
_mysterious_ in the emotions that attend the violating or the following of
the dictates of conscience. For conscience is, by this naturalistic
supposition, nothing more than an organised body of certain psychological
elements, which, by long inheritance, have come to inform us, by way of
intuitive feeling, how we should act for the interests of society; so that,
if this hypothesis is correct, there cannot be anything more mysterious or
supernatural in the working of conscience than there is in the working of
any of our other faculties. That the disagreeable feeling of
_self-reproach_, as distinguished from _religious_ feeling, should follow
upon a violation of such an organized body of psychological elements,
cannot be thought surprising, if it is remembered that one of these
elements is natural fellow-feeling, and the others the elements which lead
us to know directly that we have violated the interests of other persons.
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