Now, cannibalism, murder, cheating, tyranny, the flogging of slaves, and the torture of enemies are all immoral and evil things. They cannot be good things in the East and bad things in the West. But conscience--the mysterious and wonderful "still small voice"--blames man in one part of the world and praises him in another for committing those acts. Conscience is _local_: it tells one tale in Johannesburg or Pekin, and quite a different tale in Amsterdam or Paris. And to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our _reason_. As to historical conscience. What men thought good a few centuries ago they now think bad. Take only a few examples. Men once saw no wrong in slavery, in trial by wager of battle, in witch-burning, in the torture of prisoners to extract evidence, in the whipping of lunatics, in the use of child-labour in mines and factories, in duelling, bear-baiting, prize-fighting, and heavy drinking. Not very long ago men would tear out a man's tongue for "blasphemy," would hang a woman for stealing a turnip, would burn a bishop alive for heresy, would nail an author to the pillory by his ear for criticising a duke, would sell women and children felons into slavery; and conscience would never whisper a protest. THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE Now, it was wrong to burn heretics, and pillory reformers, and work babies to death in the mill and the mine in those days, or it is right to do the same things now. But conscience now condemns as wrong the same acts which it once approved as right; it now approves as right what it once condemned as wrong. Conscience, then, differs in different ages. Conscience tells two quite different tales at two different times. And if we want to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our _reason_. As to personal conscience. We all know that one man's conscience differs from another. We all know that in any English town on any day there are as many varieties of conscience as there are varieties of hands, and eyes, and feet, and noses. There are the Nonconformist conscience, the Roman Catholic conscience, the Rationalist conscience, the Aristocratic conscience, the Plebeian conscience, the Military conscience, the Commercial conscience, the Tory conscience, and the Socialist conscience. One man's conscience forbids him to swear, to eat meat, to drink wine, to read a newspaper on Sunday, to go to a ball or a theatre, to make a bet, to play at cards or football, to stay away from church. Another man's conscience permits him all those indulgences, but compels him to pay trade union wages, to speak courteously to servants and poor persons, to be generous to beggars, and kind to dumb animals. A very striking example of this personal difference in the ruling of conscience is afforded by the quite recent contrast between the sentiments of Northern and Southern Americans on the question of negro slavery.