The word as a noun to express a definite operation of the mind in pronouncing a judgment on the moral qualities of our acts, began to be used in the times which preceded the New Testament. It is derived from the Greek verb ovvedew, to be conscious. This came to express a reflex action of the mind, in observing its own changes or modifications, or, as we may say, the impressions made on the mind. No doubt, Plato so used it in the passage above quoted; and so Aristotle once used it. This would naturally lead to that reflex act which would reveal our estimate of the actions which we performed. Consciousness, the English word, is adopted from the Latin, which is a translation of the Greek. In each language the word means to know with. St. Paul (1 Cor. iv. 4) so uses it as to make it evident how it was leading to the word conscience. He says in the very words of Plato " -"For I am not conscious to myself" — meaning, conscious of a wrong act. This was the sense in which Horace' used it, "Nil conscire sibi;" and Virgil,2 —“Mens conscia recti." It had also been used by Isocrates 3 (338 B.C.) αν τους αλλους λαθης σεαυτω συνειδήσεις”. "Should you deceive others, you will be conscious to yourself.” The same meaning is found in Diodorus (44 B.C.),

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ουδεν

γαρ εμαυτω

συνοιδα ”

4

I Horace, Epis., lib. 1, i. 60. 2 Virgil's Æneid, 1, 604.

3 Isocrates, quoted by Sanderson, De Obligatione Conscientiæ.

4 Diodorus, quoted by Parkhurst in his Lexicon under the word ovveidnois.

where Philip of Macedon is said to have been disturbed - δια συνειδησιν της εις τον ευγανεστατον υιον ασεβειας "by the consciousness of the unnatural treatment of a most noble son." It is easy to see that this word was now approaching the meaning with which it is used in the New Testament. Cicero, in his oration for Milo, says, "Magna vis est conscientia." The word has now attained a meaning which indicated a judgment of the moral qualities of an act, and that it was part of the human constitution.

Its literal meaning is the knowing with. With what? is often asked, and differently answered. It has been said with God, — that man knows the acts of the soul together with God; that the human knowledge corresponds with the divine knowledge. But the with is not generally interpreted thus. It means the knowledge which we have with the experience of the soul. It came first, probably, to mean merely consciousness, and that was knowledge of the mind's experience; as, for instance, we say, while engaged in study in a room when a clock strikes, that we are conscious of it, or that we are not conscious of it. It has made the impression on our organs, but with them we have not recognized the sound as well as the organs of hearing. It is thus a reflex act of the mind. It is the turning the attention in on our own impressions, on the modifications of our own minds. It is said that we know that we know. It is the

recognition of the knowledge which exists in the mind. Then a farther extension of the meaning came to embrace the knowledge of the acts that we perform as moral acts, acts that we recognize as those that we ought to do. It came to express that special act of the mind, and so became a noun which designated a special operation, and an application to a special class of subjects. Thus, while the word consciousness was confined to the recognition of every modification of the mind, under any circumstance and by every class of objects, the word conscience was confined to those which had a moral character. The word seemed to have come into use, and to have acquired these two distinct meanings, between the time of Aristotle and of St. Paul. To speak of the conscience was to speak of the moral operations of the soul. And, no doubt, it was this view which was then taken that led St. Paul to speak of the body, soul, and spirit. He thus made the distinction between the three parts which go to make up the whole man, the body, the material part; the soul, the living and rational part; and the spirit, which embraced, and probably was confined to, the moral part of the human constitution. This was a rational division, and a real division; but it did not clash with the one which may be made in the mode which we have adopted.

In modern times the meaning of the operation

expressed by this word came to be a subject of profound inquiry. It was one of the subjects which came up for discussion in connection with the Deistical controversy in the seventeenth century. It was a recognized fact that the human mind made moral distinctions, and that there was such a course of action as that which we call virtue. If the Deist attempted to set aside revelation and the Christian doctrine of redemption and grace, he did not attempt to deny the conscious operation of his own mind, nor could he deny the distinction of acts as those which were moral, and those which were not. Virtue and vice were facts which must be accounted for. There was recognized a virtuous life, a life of peace and hope. It became the Deist to account for this. The doctrine of the conscience was intimately involved in the controversies of the day in accounting for the origin of moral obligation.

When Cudworth wrote his "Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality," the Platonic philosophy was popular in England. He was the advocate of that view of morality which sprang from the ideas which were part of the mind. It was the purpose of Locke to oppose that doctrine, and to show that the human mind was first a blank, tabula rasa, - and that all its ideas entered through the senses, that there were no innate ideas, no original principles in the mind. This philosophy had

a

begun with Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury; and he had applied it more particularly to moral views, and an explanation of the moral nature and of moral obligation. It very extensively affected the views of the day. It became the prevailing mode of thought, and was only overturned in later times by the common-sense philosophy of Dr. Thomas Reid.

The third Lord Shaftesbury, although infected with the sceptical views of the day, and although he stood in intimate relations to Locke, yet revolted against his philosophical doctrines, and maintained. that there was something in the human mind which perceived and appreciated moral obligation. He. had compared the moral faculty to the natural capacity of the mind to perceive, and to be affected by, beauty. It was probably this which brought Bishop Butler to see that there were moral principles in man as well as other principles, such as prudence and reason; and that man was made with a moral as well as an intellectual constitution.

It was under these influences that the real study of the conscience began in modern times. The word had been somewhat indefinite. It was probably no more definite than the expression of St. John, "If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." But it became necessary now to study it psychologically, to inquire into its nature, and into its relations to the other capacities of the human