In the East, this idea has not appealed to
the thinker in the sense in which the word Intuition is used in the
West. The moralist in the East has based ethics on Revelation, or on
Evolution, or on Illumination--the last being the basis of the Mystic.
Intuition--which by moralists like Theodore Parker, Frances Power Cobb,
and many Theists, is spoken of as the "Voice of God" in the human
soul--is identified by these with "conscience," so that to base morality
on Intuition is equivalent to basing it on conscience, and making the
dictate of conscience the categorical imperative, the inner voice which
declares authoritatively "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not".
Now it is true that for each individual there is no better, no safer,
guide than his own conscience and that when the moralist says to the
inquirer: "Obey your conscience" he is giving him sound ethical advice.
None the less is the thinker faced with an apparently insuperable
difficulty in the way of accepting conscience as an ethical basis; for
he finds the voice of conscience varying with civilisation, education,
race, religion, traditions, customs, and if it be, indeed, the voice
of God in man, he cannot but see--in a sense quite different from that
intended by the writer--that God "in divers manners spoke in past
times".
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