The Nature and Validity of Conscience and Moral Principle

Extract

With the guns of Flanders and Picardy shaking our deepest being, it has been almost impossible for us during the last two years to think at all. Thinking demands the calm hour and the dispassionate frame of mind, and no one of us has had many such hours or many such mental dispositions for some time past. But it is our duty as moral leaders in our respective communities to think as steadily and dispassionately as we can, so that our leadership shall be, not that of hysteria and emotion, but of a discriminating and inwardly controlled moral intelligence. To that end I invite your attention in this Berry Street Conference—so long devoted to serious discussion of vital topics—to a subject that seems to me of great, if not supreme, importance at the present time, namely, The Nature and Validity of Conscience and Moral Principle.