And that, therefore, conscience is not a true and certain guide to
right, and cannot be the voice of God.
First, as to geographical, or local, conscience. The English conscience
looks with horror or disgust upon polygamy, child murder, cannibalism,
and the blood feud.
The Turkish conscience allows many wives; the Redskin conscience allows
the scalping of enemies; the Afghan conscience applauds the dutiful son
who murders the nephew of his father's enemy; the cannibal conscience
is silent at a feast of cold missionary; the Chinese conscience goes
blandly to the killing of girl babies; the Rand conscience sees no evil
in the flogging of Kaffirs and Chinese; the aristocratic conscience
is not ashamed of taking the bread from starving peasants and their
children; the capitalist conscience permits the making of fortunes out
of sweated labour.
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.