Now this conscience, by which I mean this instinct which urges us to act agreeably to our conviction, whatever that may be; this conscience is for man the first of all laws, or rather the only true law. The term conscience is generally applicable to that internal sense or instinct, by which we judge of the merit or demerit of our actions.

What, indeed, is conscience but the impulse that leads us to do the will of God, and to be like him?

There is in every man, so long as he is not completely brutalized, an inexplicable sentiment which, eluding as it does all analysis, should be considered as a primitive fact of our nature; it is that of a necessity to make our actions harmonize with our conviction. I do not say the necessity to do this or that definite action: here we have already a more complex sentiment, implying certain relations and circumstances. Conscience conceived of in this second sense, is not strictly uniform in all men; nay it is liable, in different individuals, as well as in different countries, to divergencies for which materialists and Christians have very different explanations.

Conscience is often confounded with the moral law. But this moral law being a body of notions, a complex object, combining itself on one side with feeling, on the other with external things, is for this very cause mutable, and has been much impaired by the fall of man. Conscience on the other hand being a simple object, an elementary fact, has

remained unimpaired. It is nothing but the sentiment of obligation, in its greatest purity, and most perfect abstraction.

Would you have an illustration of conscience in man? An ungrateful son carried away by the intoxication of pride, and seduced by perfidious counsels, escapes from the paternal roof to enjoy an independence which has been represented to him as the greatest conceivable happiness. He ventures out into the world without support as without consent. His disorders and excesses, even when not amenable to the severity of social justice, everywhere betray his real character of a rebellious and unnatural son. But in the midst of aberration something still proves that he sprung originally from a good race; some happy choice of expressions in language; something of refinement in his manner; even in his conduct some worthy impulses which contrast with his life as a whole; in a word, some traces, hard to obliterate, of the early habits of a man well born and bred, accompany him even into those places and that society where this merit is least appreciated.

Thought, I mean moral thought, the thought of the conscience, is the man himself.

Conscience and reason are neither the whole of man, nor the whole of religion.

Conscience is not the will, it is its bridle and its rule. Conscience is the root of all morality.

It is amazing that there should be in the soul

And with what right,

What is to be made Does it want that Not

something besides the Self. for what purpose is it there? of it? Is not the Self all? Self? It would rather appear that it is the Not-Self that requires the Self; it appears that it is not within the soul's option to receive or decline this guest, even to ask it the reason of its presence. It is there, that is a fact; it will ever be there, this we feel; it claims empire to which, spite of ourselves, we submit. This Not-Self; this inalienable associate of the Self that would fain dispense with it; this duality of the human being, this unknown which disturbs so fair a unity, has given, and still gives, untold trouble to philosophers. The eternal problem that occupies them is the reconcilement of the Self and the Not-Self. They have constructed several systems on the subject, but they are only systems.

In a sense it is impossible to cease believing in virtue, I mean in the necessity, the sanctity, the inviolability of duty; it is impossible to one who has once fulfilled it, were it but in one isolated act, not to find in the impression made on him by that very act, the proof that virtue is a reality, the greatest of realities. But I maintain that the more invincible this conviction, the more insupportable is it to the soul to be unable to solve the difficulties raised by the presence of this great idea.

Conscience inalienable possession which constitutes the identity of the moral man, since deprived of this organ man would be man no longer-con

science has remained unalterable, to be the basis of his restoration. It is on this foundation that God reconstructs man.

What is there that has not been affirmed respecting the divergencies and aberrations of conscience? And yet it has none, it can have none according to our conception of it! People have quoted the instance of the savage who kills his aged parent from a sense of duty. This perversion of intellect horrifies us; this degradation makes us blush; we see in it a flagrant misapprehension of natural feeling and of moral law. But for all that it is not conscience that is impaired; it retains all its entirety, only it is profaned; it is an excellent talent employed in the service of crime.

The light of conscience is the same for all; for all alike the way of duty is easily discernible. The moral law is a simple thing; it shines into the eyes of the soul as the light of the sun does into the eyes of the body, and there is no more effort required to open the former than the latter.

In the actual condition of the human race, retracing its history as far as we possibly can, we find, indeed, moral sentiments, and a general idea of the just and the unjust; but their applications vary from age to age, from nation to nation, we might almost say from man to man. These divergencies require a uniform and sovereign rule. Man is impelled by his very conscience itself to seek for this rule elsewhere than in his conscience, which does not afford it him.

Nor is this all; conscience is nearly allied with the Self, that is to say, with all our affections and all our interests. By right, conscience is the indwelling guardian whom we maintain at our own cost, to watch over and take account of our actions; but we distract this guardian, we bribe him, we associate him with our interests, we seat him at our table, and make him drain with us the intoxicating cup; he identifies himself with our passions, espouses their cause; forgetting his character of judge, he becomes our partisan, and only from time to time remembers his own special function. Conscience might have been our rule, had it been more distinct from self, and we had been less liable to enrol the idea of duty in the service of passion. But humanity was not long in discovering that conscience, sometimes neglected, sometimes suborned, seldom obeyed, was for the most part a mere titular property, with expenses far exceeding its revenues, and that we must seek outside of self for aid against self.

What was to be done then, since man keenly felt that his will, instead of serving him as a rule, itself required ruling, rectifying; that his will, in short, was not good? Nay, he went farther; he understood that this did not exhaust the question; that more was wanted than the making his will good; that this will was evil by the very fact of making itself its own object; that, in an absolute sense, to will does not belong to man; that our will exists only to accomplish another will than ours; and that