CONSERVATIVES AND CONSCIENCE 33

whole function of conscience is to teach us how to deal

justly with our fellow men and women. And society

is simply our fellow men and women considered collec-

tively. There cannot be one kind of conscience for deal-

ing with the men and women we meet, as personsand a

second kind of conscience for dealing with abstract "so-

ciety," as if somehow society were not made up of indi-

vidual human beings. Conscience is simply conscience. It

is not "social" or "anti-social." It is the sense of right and

justice which instructs us how we, as moral persons,

ought to live with other moral persons.

So the conservative is not "anti-social" or "conscience-

less." The thinking conservative believes that conscience

is healthy in proportion_as it touches directly upon par-

ticular human beings whom we know, and unhealthy in

proportion_as it "Becomes abstract, sentimental, general-

ized, institutionalized, and directedjby impersonal politi-

cal authontyTMalryofthepeople who "bestow a kiss upon

*~the universe" and talk windily of "social conscience" are

the least reliable guardians of right and wrong when they

come face to face with private duties and their neighbors.

Conservatism has been called "loyalty to persons," as

against abstract ideological attachment to impersonal es-

tablishments and theoretic dogma. Just so, the conserva-

tive is conscientious because he respects the truly human

person, the moral individual. He is charitable precisely

because he knows that charity begins at home; he is just

precisely because he looks upon men and women as his

brothers and sisters, under a divine commandment of

love, not as units in an efficient planned economy.

Good old-fashioned conscience always has impelled

men and women to be charitable. ("Charity," literally

Generated on 2014-02-07 21:52 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016431317 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google