THE MORAL SENSE 153 



conscience shall say, we must know what has been 

 taught by its parents and teachers. 



MacDonald calls attention to another impor- 

 tant point when he says: " Moral training is not 

 the establishment of mere moral habits, as the 

 ethical people advocate, but is the unfolding and 

 widening of the deeper instincts, particularly the 

 emotions, and has its roots in the religious senti- 

 ments that so early pervade child-life. . . . The 

 parent stands in such relation to the child as to 

 enable him to seize upon the deed germ and so 

 to nourish it that it will produce the beautiful 

 plant of a pure, noble character." 



This conception of the conscience assumes (1) 

 a primal instinct that may be unfolded in child- 

 hood. This is not a moral endowment, implying 

 merit or demerit, but an endowment of the nature, 

 which when exercised opens in moral character. 

 (2) The control of the action of the child directs 

 the unfolding instinct or emotional power to the 

 good or the evil character. The conscience fac- 

 ulty may have no content, but it does have a cer- 

 tain texture which forms a basis of moral re- 

 action from the influences which shall come upon 

 it after a while. 



The important point is: not that we should 

 adopt some time for the application of a religious 

 formula and judgment concerning its spiritual 

 relation to God, but that we should regard the 

 moral awakening, whenever it comes, as a phe- 



