Dist. 39, Art. 1, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/39/q/bon-sent-II-d39-a1-q1
----------------------------------------
### Article I. *On conscience.*
### Question I. *Whether conscience belongs to the intellect or to the affective power.*

Concerning the first point one proceeds thus, and it is asked whether conscience belongs to the intellect or to the affective power. And that it belongs to the intellect, it seems:

1. *First*, through that text of Ecclesiastes 7: *Thy conscience knoweth that thou also hast often spoken evil of others;* but *to know* is the act proper to the cognitive power: if therefore it belongs to conscience to know, conscience belongs to the cognitive power.

2. Likewise, Damascene says that «conscience is the law of our intellect»; but only Scripture is called the law of the intellect, which directly regards the intellect: therefore conscience belongs to the intellective power.

3. Likewise, all knowledge is on the side of the intellect; all conscience is knowledge: therefore all conscience is on the side of the intellect. The major proposition is manifest of itself; the minor is proved, because everyone conscious of some thing is one knowing that thing: therefore, by conjugates, all conscience is knowledge.

4. Likewise, conscience is divided into right and erroneous; but the erroneous regards an intellective habit or act: if therefore the thing divided and the dividing members pertain to the same power of the soul, it seems that conscience belongs to the cognitive power.

5. Likewise, this same thing is shown through the act. For to read and to judge and to direct and to testify and to accuse are all acts pertaining to cognition; but all these acts are attributed to conscience; for conscience is a book in which we *read,* conscience also inwardly *judges,* conscience *testifies,* conscience *accuses,* conscience also *rules and directs*. Therefore it seems that conscience belongs wholly to the cognitive power, since act and habit are of the same power.

**On the contrary:** 1. If conscience belongs to the cognitive power, then either as a *power,* or as a *passion,* or as a *habit*. Not as a passion, because passions most of all regard the affective power; not as a habit, because conscience is now clean, now unclean, and no habit is changed from cleanness into uncleanness, and conversely. It remains therefore that, if conscience belongs to the cognitive power, it will be nothing other than the cognitive power: therefore if the cognitive power is about all things, not only about things to be done, but also about things to be speculated; it seems that conscience would attend not only to things of morals, but also to things of the disciplines; which is manifestly false.

2. Likewise, as the intellect is related to the true, so the affective power is related to the good: therefore if there is something whose perfection consists in goodness, that pertains more to the good of the affection than to the intellect; but conscience is of this kind — for the Apostle says in 1 Timothy 1: *Charity is from a pure*

*heart and a good conscience;* and again in the same Epistle: *Maintaining the good warfare among them, having faith and a good conscience* — therefore etc.

3. Likewise, «the law of the flesh fights against the law of the mind», according to what Damascene says; but the law of the flesh belongs to the motive power: therefore also the law of the mind belongs to the same part. But «conscience is the law of the mind», as Damascene said above: therefore conscience belongs to the *affective* power.

4. Likewise, remorse is an action of the affective power, for wherever there is remorse, there is a certain pain and passion; but it belongs to conscience to bite back, as is said upon that text of 1 Corinthians 4: *I am not conscious to myself of anything;* Gloss: «In nothing does my conscience bite me»: therefore it seems that conscience belongs to the *affective* power.

5. Likewise, the delightful and the painful belong to the affective power; but in us there is pain and gladness on the side of conscience — whence the worm of conscience will be a great pain in the damned — therefore it seems that conscience belongs to the *affective* power, not to the cognitive.

### Conclusion

> Conscience is a habit of the cognitive power, insofar as it is practical, not insofar as it is speculative.

**I respond:** For the understanding of what has been said, it must be noted that, just as the name *intellect* is taken sometimes for the power of understanding, sometimes for a habit, sometimes for the very principle understood; so the name *conscience* is wont to be taken in three ways by the doctors of sacred Scripture. For sometimes conscience is taken for the very thing of which we are conscious; and thus John Damascene says that «conscience is the law of our intellect»; for the law is that which we know through conscience. But sometimes conscience is taken for that by which we are conscious, namely for a habit, as knowledge is taken for a habit, namely of the one knowing. But sometimes conscience is taken for the very power that is conscious, so to speak, according to which it is said that the natural law is written in our consciences. Since therefore the name of conscience is wont to be taken in three ways, yet in the *more usual* way the name of conscience is taken for a *habit,* as also the name of knowledge, from which it is compounded.

If therefore it be asked, of which power it is the habit; it must be said that it is a habit of the *cognitive* power, yet otherwise than speculative knowledge itself is: because speculative knowledge is the perfection of our intellect, insofar as it is speculative; but conscience is a habit perfecting our intellect, insofar as it is *practical,* or insofar as it directs in action. And thus the intellect has in a certain way the character of a *mover,* not because it effects motion, but because it dictates and inclines to motion. — And therefore such a habit is not simply named *knowledge,* but *conscience,* so that by this it may be signified that this habit does not perfect the speculative power *in itself,* but insofar as it is in a certain way *joined to affection and operation.* On account of which we do not say that the dictate of conscience is directed to this principle: every whole is greater than its part, and to such like; but we do well say that conscience dictates that God is to be honored, and like principles, which are as rules of things to be done. — It must therefore be granted, as the reasons show, that conscience belongs to the *cognitive* power, although it does not belong to it insofar as it is *speculative,* but insofar as it is *practical.* «For the speculative and practical intellect name the same power, differing only by extension», as the Philosopher says: nor is it in any way to be understood that the practical intellect is appetite or will; for the Philosopher himself denies this.

1. To that therefore which is objected on the contrary, that conscience cannot be a power nor a passion nor a habit on the side of the cognitive power; it must be said that

on the contrary it can name both a *power* and a *habit.* And when it names a *power,* it does not name the cognitive power universally, but insofar as it extends to knowing the things that are of *morals* or to moral matters. But when it names a *habit,* it names not only a natural habit, but rather it can also name an *acquired* habit. And because an *acquired* habit can purify and defile the soul, hence it is that conscience is called clean and unclean, right and not right. Yet these differences regard conscience more insofar as it stands for the name of the *power,* than insofar as it stands for the name of the *habit.*

2. To that which is objected, that conscience is called good and bad; it must be said that goodness and malice regard not only the affection, but rather also the practical intellect and its habit, for the reason that the practical intellect does not consist only in the true, but also extends itself to the good. And therefore that judicatory faculty, which indeed is conscience, is good when it dictates the good and inclines to the good and draws back from evil and shuns it; and therefore it does not follow that conscience is in the affective power. For for it to be called good, it is not required that it be an affection by its essence, but it suffices that with the will and affection itself it have a certain concomitance.

3. To that which is objected, that the law of the flesh is opposed to the law of the mind; it must be said that, as master Hugh of St. Victor says, in sensuality or in the exterior man there is corruption not only as to the motive and inclinative power, but also as to the sensitive; and therefore, although the law of the flesh consists principally in the concupiscence inclining to evil, nevertheless it presupposes the imaginative and cognitive power representing carnal things to it inordinately. And likewise in the law of the mind these two things are to be considered. But conscience, as far as concerns itself, is more directly opposed to the law of the flesh by reason of the preceding cognition than by reason of concupiscence.

4. To that which is objected about remorse, it must be said that conscience is said to bite back, for this reason: that, while it itself shows some evil to the affection having rectitude, it brings on remorse, for the reason that that affection kicks back. Whence remorse is not from conscience as principally moving, but as from one dictating; but from the spark of conscience, which indeed is synderesis, it is as from one moving, as will better appear hereafter.

5. To that which is objected, that the painful and the delightful are on the side of conscience; it must be said that it is not from conscience, nor in conscience except as in one disposing and dictating. For to rejoice and to grieve belongs properly to the affection. But when conscience, which is a right witness, testifies concerning a good deed, that it is good, and concerning an evil deed, that it is evil, it generates from this grief, or gladness in the affection. Whence also the Apostle says: *Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience;* not attributing to conscience itself principally the passion of rejoicing, but the act of testifying.