To such of us the violation of conscience is its own
punishment, as the pursuit of virtue is its own reward. For we know that
not more certainly than fire will burn, any violation of the deeply-rooted
feelings of our humanity will leave a gaping wound which even time may not
always heal. And when it is shown us that our natural dread of fire is due
to a supernatural cause, we may be prepared to entertain the argument that
our natural dread of sin, as distinguished from our dread of God, is
likewise due to such a cause. But until this can be done we must, as
reasonable men, _whose minds have been trained in the school of nature_,
forbear to allow that the one fact is of any greater cogency than the
other, so far as the question of a supernatural cause of either is
concerned. For, as we have already seen, the law of parcimony forbids us to
ascribe "the phenomena of conscience as a dictate" to a supernatural cause,
until the science of psychology shall have proved that they cannot have
been due to natural causes. But, as we have also seen, the science of
psychology is now beginning, as quick and thoroughly as can be expected, to
prove the very converse; so that the probability is now overwhelming that
our moral sense, like all our other faculties, has been evolved. Therefore,
while the burden of proof really lies on the side of Theism--or with those
who account for the natural phenomena of conscience by the hypothesis of a
supernatural origin--this burden is now being rapidly discharged by the
opposite side.
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