ABSTRACT
Erroneous Conscience—except in the trivial sense of conscience as moral decision hic et nunc, misinformed as to facts—is logically impossible, seeing that Conscience is the ultimate test of morality, with no standard above it by which it could be verified or falsified. Ineffectual conscience might appear to be an unreal, a merely conventionally pretended conscience; and all wrongful conduct, based on erroneous conscience. Unlike erroneous or ineffectual conscience proper, Overlain Conscience means an abdication of Conscience as moral judgement: as a representative and interpreter of universal moral demands. In developing an overlain conscience, the agent alienates the sovereignty of his conscience, transferring it to a concrete Being, Force or Will to whose dictate he chooses to submit or with which he emotionally identifies himself. Overlain Conscience is not conscience standing for 'another morality'. It is falsified conscience under the spell of a non-moral 'absolute', and grafted onto that irrecusable interpenetration between moral demands and natural or preferential loyalties.
