26 SEPTEMBER 1868, Page 19

MR. MAURICE ON THE CONSCIENCE.*

IN the noble lecture delivered by Professor Huxley at Norwich 4' On a Piece of Chalk," printed in this month's number of Mac- millan's Magazine, the following passage occurs :—" I weigh my words well when I assert that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in Lis breeches' pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer and therefore a better conception of this wonderful universe, and of man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of nature." Professor Huxley is the Sir Lancelot of the English men of science of our generation. As their chosen champion he has broken more lances and unhorsed more doughty enemies than we can at this moment count. The "well weighed words" just 'quoted are the last trumpet note which he blows, scornfully enough, as he rides along in the free air under the old holds of the moral philosophers, into which we suspect the Professor would say that no clear ray of light ever has penetrated or can penetrate. At any rate, a large section of the ablest of our young men hold, and avow more or less openly, according to their courage and honesty, that the attempt to solve such problems as the moral philosopher deals with "can lead to no results save that of entangling the inquirer

The Conscience. Lectures on Casuistry. Delivered in the University of Cambridge. By F. D. Maurice. London: Macmillan and Co.

in vague speculations, incapable alike of refutation and of verifica- tion." So the great question is put to-day in far other and more serious tones than any that our time has yet heard. The difference between Professor Huxley's earnest and well-weighed words, and the flippant scoff of Lord Macaulay that the best writer on morals does not deserve half the gratitude from mankind which is due to a good shoemaker, will gauge for us the interval between the temper of 1869 and that of thirty years back in this controversy. If those who are "most deeply read in the records of humanity" have any word to say, now is their time, if they would not see the pith and strength of English manhood gathered into the fold of Utilitarianism or Materialism under their eyes.

The publication, therefore, of these lectures on the conscience, by the Cambridge Professor of Casuistry and Moral Philosophy, seems to us happily timed. Mr. Maurice has long since, in our judgment at least, established his position as the most practical of living English metaphysicians. His bitterest opponent would not deny the wide and deep influence his teaching has had, though such an one might maintain the effect of it to have been the unsettling of the minds of youth, and loosening their hold on old faiths, precisely the accusation which was brought against Socrates. It is just because of this thoroughly practical turn, because he will never indulge in mere intellectual wrestling matches, because he has no cut-and-dried system to fasten on disciples any more than Socrates had, but is instant and resolute in bringing them face to face with the most momentous of all facts, that he fills the place in moral, analogous to that of Professor Huxley, in physical science. Each in his own sphere is an uncompromising seeker for truth, the aim of each is to make men think more earnestly and live more bravely,. Ile is, therefore, the right man to answer the challenge from Norwich, and, in the present volume, has done so by anticipation, for the course of lectures were delivered at Cam- bridge months before the last meeting of the British Association.

In the first of these lectures Mr. Maurice grapples with this doubt, so widespread in our day,—whether the student of morals has any real subject to treat of. "Does the word I," lie asks, "seem to you an unpractical word, one which only concerns shadows ? You do not act as if this were so. You do not speak as if this were so. You are rather angry if reverence is withdrawn from the word. In making your calculations about the doings of other men or your own, is it not your maxim that this I is entitled to a primary consideration? Well ! it is this which the moralist claims for his investigation. Ile thinks, as you seem to think, that whatever may be the value or interest of the things which are seen, or handled, or tasted, or smelt, I, who see, and handle, and taste, and smell, am at least as interesting to myself as they can be." In clearing his ground he shows us that in holding us rigorously to this method of Egotism he is following a method which encourages no vanity, provokes thought in every man, is perfectly compatible with all that is most valuable in our English reticence and reserve ; that lie is not asking us to examine a thing or things ; if the I were a 'thing' students would get their knowledge of it in lecture-rooms, where things were treated of ; but the mathematical, the physical, the philological, and the historical lecturer alike exclude or pass by this word and what it signifies; that lie is not leading us to an abstraction, that if he were to have recourse to the ordinary philosophical terms of " personality " or "individuality," he should be driven at last in following his method " to the shame of giving I in exchange for those splendid polysyllables." This I, then, being our subject, we find it at once inseparably connected with other words, es- pecially with " conscience," "consciousness," " ought," and "ought not." These words are full of difficulty and apparent contradiction, but must be grappled with in the outset by the honest casuist, the subject of casuistry being the conscience. To that subject, accordingly, the present course is strictly confined. The treatment of it is just what any reader moderately well acquainted with Mr. Maurice's other books, particularly his Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, would look for. It will be found disappointing, even exasperating, to many classes of readers, not- withstanding all its wealth and picturesqueness of illustration— by those who are in search of views, opinions, information, a system of philosophy. Mr. Maurice is a casuist who will lay down for us no rules of conscience, who refuses to chew their food for pupils, or to keep them in philosophic leading-strings or perambulators. • They must be roused to do the work, to win each step for themselves. "The conscience asks for laws, not rules ; for freedom, not chains ; for education, not suppression." These blessings, according to Mr. Maurice, it is the casuist's business to aid students in seeking and acquiring, but they must be themselves the seekers and acquirers. If there was any pupil in the Cam-

bridge lecture-room drawn there, not by the mere desire to do well in the Moral Science Tripos,' or to have his ears and intel- lect pleasantly tickled and excited, but to seek knowledge in the highest field open to man, he can scarcely have failed to gain such help as this. If he does not in due course become aware of certain facts in this field of knowledge, reached by analogous processes to those the physical student uses, facts of infinite importance to himself as a man, and more sure than day and night, it will not be the fault of his teacher. That there are no pupils of this stamp in our day we must take leave to doubt, though all the wise men in the world should assure us from their own observation (as many indeed do) that there is no longer any trace in modern society of that sense of an unendurable burthen, no sound of that passionate cry for deliverance, which has been a characteristic of men hitherto.

We have no space to notice in any detail the several lines of experimental thought (if we may be allowed the expression) by which Mr. Maurice would lead his readers to examine current philosophical systems and theories. Whether the conscience is a faculty, or what else ; whether in all men, or only in some men ; whether it makes its own standard ; what place it can hold under Mr. Bentham's theory that "Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain ;" under Mr. Bain's that "punishment is the commencement of that state of mind recognized under the name of conscience," and that this conscience is to be trained by punishment till it conforms itself to the standards of society ; whether conscience must be ruled by the brain, or the nervous system, or the uniform action of motives,—the influence of education in crushing or awakening the conscience, these are amongst the questions which we shall have to face for ourselves, and in facing which we cannot choose but become conscious of what is passing in ourselves, if we will use the book as the author desires that we should. if we are asked im- patiently what, after all, is Mr. Maurice's own theory, system ? What proof can he possibly give that it is at all truer or better than Bentham's, Bain's, or that of any other man who has thought on these questions ? We can only answer that he has no theory or system. He states certain facts which he tells us are common to every man. You and I have each of us the means of testing these facts ; for instance, whether there is that in you or in me which says what you or I ought or ought not to do ; whether the " I " and the " ought " are inseparable in you or in me ; whether there is also in you and in me a living guide, teacher, deliverer, to whom that in you and me which says "ought" and "ought not" can turn. " Ah, at last we catch you!" we can hear impatient readers exclaim. "You are endeavouring to impose on us as a philosophical inquiry the pleading of a Christian priest for the doctrine of the indwelling Spirit." Again we can only answer, "Read, and see. Were Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Christians ? They are the chief witnesses." Mr. Maurice no doubt holds that the teaching of Christ explains, supplements, binds together the experience of the truest /and greatest )alen of all times and faiths, but the method of his book did not require that he should rely or insist on this, and he has not done so.

We know too well how careless of all such questions the present generation is. We admit, to our sorrow and our shame, that the number of students who care to know anything of what is going on in themselves is probably even smaller than those who insist on satisfying themselves that there are coccolinths in chalk. But there are signs that the time of this indifference is passing away, and that here and there Englishmen are again ready to inquire whether moral knowledge, like physical, does or does not admit of degrees ? Whether the true and false have not been from the earliest times intermingled in the one as in the other ? Whether in the one as in the other the steps are not given to the honest and patient seeker? To any such this book on the conscience will be very welcome.

We started from Professor Huxley's challenge in his late lecture, and must conclude by stating in, we trust equally well-weighed words, that any honest and truth-seeking reader of Mr. Maurice's lectures may fairly reply to him,—when the man who should know not only the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches' pocket, but the true history of every globigerina whose old shell has gone to make that chalk,—has pursued his investigations till he has mastered every other branch of physical science, has satisfied himself even of the precise moment when our race first appeared on the scene, and has learned all that physiology can teach of ourbrains and nervous system,—if he wishes to have any true conception whatever of man's relation to this wonderful universe, after he has thought out his knowledge he will just have to begin with the inquiry, what am I? and to pursue that inquiry with all the patience and courage of the scientific man in

regions more real and awful than any he has yet explored. The masters of physical science (in reverence and gratitude for whose work we will yield to no one) may if they please take a leaf out of the book of certain so-called theologians in their treatment of the student of moral science, but in so doing they will be false to their own principles, and while the world stands and man remains upon it, will never persuade him that his knowledge is to be limited by the things which he can see, and taste, and handle.