Day 46 Conscience

Image from "17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore" by Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter

(see also Art of Standing Aside)

“Children are born Law-abiding. ––'Naughty baby!' says the mother; and the child's eyes droop, and a flush rises over neck and brow. It is very wonderful; very 'funny,' some people think, and say, 'Naughty baby!' when the baby is sweetly good, to amuse themselves with the sight of the infant soul rising visibly before their eyes. But what does it mean, this display of feeling, conscience, in the child, before any human teaching can have reached him? No less than this, that he is born a law abiding being, with a sense of may, and must not, of right and wrong. That is how children are sent into the world with the warning, 'Take heed that ye offend not one of these little ones.' And––this being so––who has not met big girls and boys, the children of right-minded parents, who yet do not know what must means, who are not moved by ought, whose hearts feel no stir at the solemn name of Duty, who know no higher rule of life than 'I want,' and 'I don't want,' 'I like,' and 'I don't like'? Heaven help parents and children when it has come to that!” 

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“The ignorance of children about the commonest matters of right and wrong is really pathetic; and yet they are too often treated as if they knew all about it, because 'they have consciences,' as if conscience were any more than a spiritual organ waiting for direction!”

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“Moral Stability. ––But the uninstructed conscience is open to every prompting of inclination, seconded, as it is sure to be, by a thousand good reasons. This is the cause of the instability of conduct shown by the savage, the criminal, the raw schoolboy, the rough yokel, and the ignorant and undisciplined of every class of life, even when such ignorance is credited by a university degree. It is only the instructed conscience which is stable.”

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“But when we count up our blessings, let us not fail to number this, of the continual chiding of conscience. A wise man has said that, were there no other evidence of the existence of God, the conscience of man is a final proof. Let us accept the strivings of conscience in this light, and rejoice.”

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  “Only by 'masterly inactivity,' 'wise passiveness,' able 'letting alone,' can a child be trained –– ‘To reverence his conscience as his king.’”
 
 
 
Examen: “Only by” - Mason is sure there is one way to over-see the instruction of the “spiritual organ” with which a child arrives, am I?   How am I allowing the students to “weigh actions for themselves?”


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Children are born: Charlotte M. Mason, Home Education, 1:13–14.
The ignorance of children: 1:339.
Moral Stability.-: Charlotte M. Mason, Ourselves, 4:61 Bk.II.
But when we count: Mason, 4:115 Bk.II.
Only by “masterly inactivity,”:  Charlotte M. Mason, School Education, 3:43.

Day 46 Conscience meditation/100 Days copyright Laurie Bestvater 2025

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