Saturday, January 17, 2009

Sterne on the subordination of conscience

"'your conscience is not a law:No, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;not, like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,but like a British judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows already written.'"

     Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).

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