Studies in Words by C. S. Lewis

Author:C. S. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

8

CONSCIENCE AND CONSCIOUS

I. PRELIMINARIES

Greek oida and Latin scio mean ‘I know’. The Greek verb can be compounded with the prefix sun or xun (sunoida), the Latin with cum which in composition becomes con-, giving us conscio. Sun and cum in isolation mean ‘with’. And sometimes they retain this meaning when they become prefixes, so that sunoida and conscio can mean ‘I know together with, I share (with someone) the knowledge that’. But sometimes they had a vaguely intensive force, so that the compound verbs would mean merely ‘I know well’, and perhaps finally little more than ‘I know’. Each verb has a train of related words. With sunoida goes the noun suneidesis and (its synonym) the neuter participle to suneidos, and the masculine participle suneidôs; with conscio, the noun conscientia and the adjective conscius. It will be seen at once that the double value of the prefixes may affect all these, so that suneidesis and conscientia could be either the state (or act) of sharing knowledge or else simply knowledge, awareness, apprehension—even something like mind or thought.

Our word therefore has two branches of meaning; that which uses the full sense (‘together’) of the prefix and that in which the prefix is—or may be treated for our purpose as being—almost inoperative. Let us for convenience call them the together branch and the weakened branch.

The richest and most useful developments of the weakened branch are in English comparatively modern, but some of its earlier and obsolete senses need to be noticed at once. I shall therefore begin with a brief glance at the weakened branch; then turn to the together branch; and in conclusion turn back to the weakened in its later condition.

II. THE WEAKENED BRANCH

We read in Diogenes Laertius (VII, 85) ‘Chrysippus says that the first property of every animal is its structure and the suneidesis of this’. Suneidesis here can hardly mean anything other than ‘awareness’. The Greek Lexicon quotes from Plutarch ‘to suneidos of the affairs’, presumably the knowledge of them. The Septuagint version gives us ‘curse not the king in your suneidesis’1 where A.V. has ‘curse not the king, no not in thy thought’.

Latin usages of the same sort are numerous, but usually post-classical. Macrobius mentions one Vettius as ‘unice conscius of all sacred matters’—uniquely knowledgeable about or learned in.2 Where the Septuagint has merely ‘we don’t know’ (ouk oidamen) in Genesis xliii. 22, the Vulgate reads ‘it is not in our conscientia’. When Tertullian speaks of convictions lodged in our ‘innate conscientia’3 or Lactantius of what is ‘clear to our conscientia’4 some sense like ‘mind’ or ‘understanding’ is required.

It will at once be obvious that the French la conscience descends from the weakened branch; a Frenchman could perhaps use it to translate the conscientia of Tertullian and Lactantius. In Modern English the specialisation of consciousness for this purpose has left conscience free to develop almost exclusively the ‘together’ senses; a notable example of desynonymisation. But it is a comparatively recent achievement. When Gawain saw his hostess steal

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