=Deepening of Meaning.=--While the materials and conceptions of more
conscious morality are provided by the earlier stages, and taken from
other spheres of life, we find that these conceptions naturally undergo
a deepening of meaning when they are used to express the more intimate
and personal attitude. Take, for example, the conceptions borrowed from
the jural sphere. It is in the school of government and courts that man
has learned to talk and think of right and law, of responsibility and
justice. To make these moral instead of jural terms, the first thing
that is needed is that we make the whole process an inward one. The
person must himself set up a standard, recognize it as "law," judge his
conduct by it, hold himself responsible to himself, and seek to do
justice. It takes several persons to carry on these processes in the
realm of government. Legislators, judges, jury, executive officers, all
represent the State, organized society. That a single person can be
himself lawgiver, judge, and jury, as well as claimant or defendant,
shows that he is himself a complex being. He is a being of passions,
appetites, and individual interests, but he is also a being who has a
rational and social nature. As a member of society he not only feels his
individual interest but recognizes social interests. As a rational
being he not only feels the thrill of passion but responds to the
authority of a law and obeys the voice of duty. Like a member of a
democratic State he finds himself in the sphere of conduct, not only a
subject but a sovereign, and feels the dignity of a _person_. A
conscientious person is in so far one who has made the law of God or man
an inward law of life--a "moral law." But the act of making the process
inward makes possible a deepening of meaning. Governments and courts are
necessarily limited in purview and fallible in decisions. They are
sometimes too lenient, sometimes too severe. Conscience implies a
knowledge of the whole act--purpose, motive, and deed. Its authority
makes claim for absolute obedience. The laws of the State are felt to be
binding just because they are believed to be, on the whole, right and
just as measured by this moral court of appeal. When they conflict, the
power may be with the political sovereign, but the man whose conscience
is clear believes that he follows a "higher law." Much of the great
literature of the world draws its interest from its portrayal of this
fundamental fact of human experience. "Two things fill the mind with
ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more
steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law
within."
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