The 128 most classic philosophical essays in the world

Chapter 53: On Conscience

[French] Montaigne
In the absence of outside witnesses, conscience will chase us and turn against us.

The power of conscience is amazing!Conscience makes us betray, makes us accuse, makes us fight.In the absence of outside witnesses, conscience will chase us and turn against us.

Juvenalis said: Conscience is like an invisible whip, whipping us anytime and anywhere, acting as our executioner.

According to Plato, punishment follows evil closely.Hesiord says that punishment begins at the same time as sin.Whoever is waiting for punishment is being punished; whoever deserves punishment is waiting for punishment.Malice brings misery to the wicked.

Those who do bad things suffer the most from doing bad things!It is like a bee that stings a man, but it hurts itself more because it loses its sting and its strength.

Virgil's description of this is: they lost their lives while hurting people.

Due to the law of contradictions and opposites in nature, the stinger secretes a detoxification of its own venom.The same is true for people, even if they feel pleasure when they do evil, it will backfire on their conscience, causing a sense of disgust, causing many pains and associations, torturing themselves no matter when they sleep or wake up.

Apollo Doros saw in a dream that he had been skinned by the Scythians and boiled in a pot, and his conscience murmured to him, "I have caused all your pain." Epicurus said: "Bad men have nowhere to hide, for they have nowhere to hide, and conscience betrays them."

Conscience can make us fearful, but it can also make us firm and confident.A person can go through many obstacles on his own life path and his steps are always steady, because he has a deep understanding of his own intentions and his plans are aboveboard.

Ovid said: Whether a person is filled with fear or hope depends entirely on the judgment of conscience.

There are thousands of examples of this kind, and it is only necessary to cite three instances of the same character.

Scipio was once charged with a great crime before the people of Rome, and instead of asking for forgiveness or interceding with the judges, he said to them, "Well, you don't have the right to judge everyone because of me, Now it's going to pick my head up."

Another time, when the people's court sued him, he never defended himself, but just talked eloquently: "Come on, my citizens, go to the gods and thank the gods for allowing me to defeat the Carthaginians on a day like today." So saying, he strode towards the temple, and saw all the people following him, including his accuser.

Again the People's Tribunal summoned Scipio, at the request of Cato, to report all the expenditures of the province of Antioch.Scipio came to the senate on this matter, and drew the ledger from under his robe, saying that it contained all the receipts and payments in full, but he did not agree to have it transferred to the court archives, saying that he would not take it for himself. Humiliated, he tore the account book into pieces in front of everyone in the Senate.

Torture is a dangerous invention that seems to test patience rather than truth.Those who can endure torture will hide the truth, and those who cannot endure torture will also hide the truth.Pain can make people confess facts, why can't they make people confess non-facts?On the other hand, if the one who was unjustly accused had the patience to endure these tortures, wouldn't the one who deserved them not have the patience to endure them in order to get a good reward in life?
The rationale for believing this invention is based on the idea of ​​the power of conscience.For it seems to the guilty man that torture can make him weak and speak his faults; but the innocent man will be stronger and will not fear torture.To be honest, this approach is fraught with uncertainty and danger.

In order to escape the unbearable pain, what words can't be said, what things can't be done?

The judge tortured a person in order not to let him die innocently, but the result was that he let the person die innocently after being tortured.Thousands of tortured heads filled with false confessions.

There were many nations called barbarians by Greece and Rome, who were not so barbarous in this respect, and considered it a terrible cruelty to torment and kill a man whose error he only suspected.You don't want to kill him for no reason and do something worse to him than kill him, are you not injustice?Here's the thing: how many times he'd rather die for no reason than be tried, which is often more painful than the death penalty, which amounts to execution before it can be carried out.

Heart mark notes
Even when doing the most secret things, we don't lack an audience - our own conscience.Kant once said that there are two things that are always worthy of awe: the brilliant starry sky above and the moral law within.The inner moral law is a person's conscience.As long as we stick to the bottom line of conscience, we will not get lost in the dark tunnel of human nature, and we will not choke under the temptation of evil.Those who keep their conscience, no matter what they encounter, can keep their faith as always.

(End of this chapter)