The Hindu Business Line : The softest pillow is a clear conscience

CONSCIENCE. I knew I'd have to come to terms with it one day or the other, and so was consciously keeping it outside this column. But Shibu precipitated matters by talking about it last week and making all of us sleepless. We aren't alone, because conscience is doing its rounds in many places.

For instance, Tony Blair says abortion is a matter of individual conscience and not a general election issue. Adam Gilchrist is praised as "a cricketer with a conscience" for stirring contrasting emotions in hard-nosed cricket by `walking' before given out by the umpire, as a story on www.dailytimes.com.pk reminds us.

In stark contrast, there are commentaries about whether our own icon should have listened to his conscience in Mohali even as a bat-pad catch off Danish Kaneria got the benefit of doubt from the umpire Rudi Koertzen. One is reminded of Antonio's word in The Tempest: "Ay, sir; where lies that? I feel not this deity in my bosom: twenty consciences."

Conscience is "a person's moral sense of right and wrong," explains Concise Oxford English Dictionary. A more detailed note is found in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: "the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good."

It is also "a faculty, power, or principle enjoining good acts" and "the part of the superego in psychoanalysis that transmits commands and admonitions to the ego." Conscience, as the Online Medical Dictionary on http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk defines is "the cognitive and affective processes which constitute an internalised moral governor over an individual's moral conduct", though if you were to ask patients they may wonder if doctors would believe in something they don't see inside.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is categorical that justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity, and adds, "Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."

Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking, said James Freeman Clarke. A voice you can hear if, as Chamberlain says in King Henry VIII, you creep too near the conscience.

"So much my conscience whispers in your ear, which none but heaven and you and I shall hear," says Queen Elinor to King John. There can be mixed signals if as in King Richard III you come across "a conscience with a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale!"

New Testament speaks of conscience `bearing witness'. In Paradise Lost, John Milton writes: "O Conscience, into what abyss of fears and horrors hast thou driven me, out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged." However, Kahlil Gibran notes that conscience is a just but weak judge, and that its weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment.

`Conscientious', or wishing to do what's right, is often confused with `conscious', that is, aware of and responding to one's surroundings. Conscionable, meaning acceptable to conscience, is no longer accepted as current. A `conscientious objector' is one who holds beliefs that are not compatible with military service. `Prisoner of conscience' is one who is put in jail for being a conscientious objector.

Crise de conscience is `crisis of conscience', the agonizing period of moral uncertainty, which Shibu underwent till that fateful midnight, even as a deadline imposed by the apex court closed in on him. `Conscience money' is what is paid anonymously to wash one's guilt and pacify the conscience; thus, the payer restores to the victim what was wrongfully acquired in the first place, or simply drops a big wad of notes into the temple hundial.

`Conscience clause' is a clause in a legislation or contract to exempt those who have moral or religious objections to complying, such as what the Sikhs have been fighting for in many countries that ban turbans. And in the UK, there is an ongoing debate whether the Press Complaints Commission should devise a new `conscience clause' that will allow reporters to refuse to file stories when they viewed the editorial line to be unethical. Don't search for `court of conscience' outside because it is a theological concept that your conscience will testify for or against your actions in life after death, and don't ask if there is a further court of appeal! "Why should not conscience have vacation as well as other courts o' th' nation?" wonders Samuel Butler.

In all conscience, or in good conscience, is about being fair and reasonable. However, what's `on your conscience' is what you're anxious or guilty about, making you conscience-stricken or conscience-smitten. You can appeal to people to do or not to do `for conscience sake' instead of saying conscience's sake, as H.W. Fowler recommends in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: "When the enclosed word is both a common noun and one whose possessive is a syllable longer than its subjective, the s of the possessive is not used."

On the origin of the word, Encarta says, "13th century. Via Old French from Latin conscientia `consciousness,' from conscire `to be conscious,' literally `to know thoroughly,' from scire (see science)." So, I see science to learn that it is "from Latin scientia, from scient-, present participle stem of scire `to know,' ultimately `to discern,' from an Indo-European word meaning `to cut.'"

Online Etymology Dictionary hypothesises that the word conscience is "probably a loan-translation of Gk. syneidesis." It also shows a few related words such as `casuist', one who studies and resolves cases of conscience; and `compunction', pricking of conscience.

Like it or not, s*** is a cousin of science and conscience, as you can read on www.etymonline.com. It may be nice to know that `nice' is also from Latin nescius `ignorant,' from ne+scire.

Interestingly, `scruple' or the morality doubt, is from a diminutive of Latin scrupus meaning sharp stone or pebble; "used figuratively by Cicero for a cause of uneasiness or anxiety, probably from the notion of having a pebble in one's shoe." Shakespeare's King Henry VIII talks of how his conscience "first received a tenderness, scruple, and prick."

If you say, "Love is too young to know what conscience is," the Bard would respond in a sonnet, "Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?"

Isn't public opinion the same as conscience? No, it's `a second conscience', says William Rounseville Alger. "When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it," is a quote of Jack Kevorkian, but `it' can cause some confusion.

"Where is thy conscience now?" asks First Murderer in King Richard III. The Second Murderer replies, "In the Duke of Gloucester's purse." A case, as King Henry V says, of conscience "wide as hell, mowing like grass."

Joseph Cook compares conscience to magnetic compass, and reason to the chart. For Benjamin Franklin, a clear conscience was `the best tranquilliser'. A brochure from Infosys is titled `The softest pillow is a clear conscience,' borrowing from a proverb. Mark Twain's ideal life has only three components: "Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience."

Steven Wright may agree, for he holds a clear conscience as a sign of bad memory. So would Hamlet, saying, "Conscience does make cowards of us all."

And King Richard III would nod too: "Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe." But Erich Fromm would rue that it is paradoxical, and tragic, that a man's conscience is weakest when he needs it most.

To wrap, if you're wondering where the voice that Shibu heard came from, there may be clue in a Richard Brinsley Sheridan's quote: " Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics."

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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