The outer is a reflection of the inner.
Now conscience is the sum total of the experiences in past lives which
have borne sweet and bitter fruit, according as they were in accord or
disaccord with surrounding natural law. This sum total of _physical_
experiences, which result in increased or diminished life, we call
instinct, and it is life-preserving. The sum total of our interwoven
_mental and moral_ experiences, in our relations with others, is
moral instinct, or conscience, and it is harmonising, impels to
"good"--a word which we shall define in our fourth chapter.
Hence conscience depends on the experiences through which we have passed
in previous lives, and is necessarily an individual possession. It
differs where the past experience is different, as in the savage and the
civilised man, the dolt and the talented, the fool and the genius, the
criminal and the saint. The voice of God would speak alike in all; the
experience of the past speaks differently in each. Hence also the
consciences of men at a similar evolutionary level speak alike on broad
questions of right and wrong, good and evil. On these the "voice" is
clear. But there are many questions whereon past experience fails us,
and then conscience fails to speak.
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