advance in humanitarianism, in our
treatment of men and animals, is evidence to us of the illimitable
capacities of moral expansion in our nature, and therefore of the
growth of conscience, or the moral sentiment.

But are we to conclude therefrom that conscience is nothing more than a
product of organic evolution? It is a shallow philosophy, a surface
system, indeed, which is content with such an estimate, and is only
possible in a school of bald empiricism which imprisons man within the
boundaries of his sense-experience, and resolves him into a string of
feelings bound together, like a rope of sand, by nothing. The truth
is, that Mr. Spencer, Mr. Bain, Mr. Mill and the whole _corps_ of
experimental philosophers are confusing the reality with its outward
manifestation or history. Indeed, by their principles they are
constrained to do so. Once affirm that nothing beyond the reach of
your sensory organs is trustworthy, and conscience must be, like the
nervous system, the development of a shock or a thrill. But it has
never apparently dawned upon these thinkers that the very
distinguishing note of conscience, its compulsory power, its assumption
of authority to command the obedience of the will and its capacity to
torment the soul with an overmastering remorse--to make a man say, "my
sin is greater than I can bear"--is left wholly unexplained and
unaccounted for in the historical analysis with which they favour us.
What we want to know is: Whence has conscience the strange, mysterious
power to influence us even in the sanctuary of our thoughts; why does
the wicked man flee when no one pursueth except that the sleepless eye
of his own outraged conscience is upon him and he cannot tolerate its
reproachful gaze? Nowhere do we feel the inadequacy of the
sense-philosophy more piercingly than in this matter of conscience. It
has cut the world in twain and treated it as a piece of mechanism and
reduced man to the position of an automaton.

But the facts are too strong; Nature is too strong. Every time some
splendid heroism, some complete self-surrender is made; every time some
deed of moral enthusiasm thrills the pulses of the world, or some
lonely man or woman succeeds in crushing some infamous desire; every
time for the sake of the good, for the sake of the right alone, we
resist "even unto blood," conscience is exalted and enthroned above the
stars, lifted utterly out of the low and insignificant category of
physi