DEONTOLOGY. 283 
condemnation in every yet unexecuted sentence which 
remains, rightly or wrongly, unrevoked. The operation of 
the sense of duty in the mind of man, determined, as it is, by 
the discharge of these superior functions, discovers itself by 
indications which, in common opinion, but, as is obvious, not. 
completely, find their interpretation in the term conscience. 
A man, in so far as, in conjunction with his sense of duty, 
his reflective faculty has been evolved, not only feels the 
obligation to control resisting inclinations, but knows that he 
feels it, and why he feels it, and, instructed by this 
experience, forms the conception of duty. That what he has 
conceived is no phantasy, he cannot but be well assured, 
since the knowledge which his firm persuasion, if well 
founded, presupposes is the immediate perception of 
relations which his mind’s eye, introverted, has discerned 
in contemplating the phenomena it has seen within. A 
conscientious desire to fulfil all duties admits, and indeed 
from the first gives rise to, the consciousness of an undefinable 
amount of ignorance relatively to innumerable particulars 
included in this comprehensive obligation; but it precludes 
all doubt as to what duty itself is, considered simply as such. 
How then, we may now ask, does conscience operate in 
those who are endowed with it in determining the scope of 
their sense of duty, and the various obligations which demand 
their recognition ? This sense, as I have pointed out already, 
is, So far as it can be detected in any of the lower animals, a 
species of affection in which they feel the pull, so to speak, of 
an authoritative will. It does not, however, appear that 
they have the capacity for being thus affected immediately 
and directly by any higher will than is discovered to them 
in the actions of man, the creature whose privilege it is to 
exercise lordship over the brute creation, and in reference to 
whom the following well-known clause in a sacred charter may, 
I think, in this connection be cited as appropriate: “ The fear 
of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the 
earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that movetk 
upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea, into your 
hand are they delivered.” (Genesis ix,2.) But a man,if both 
his sense of duty and moreover his intelligence are adequately 
developed, is capable of perceiving that the authority to 
which he is ultimately responsible is not the will of a fellow 
creature, however eminent the station which the latter may 
have reached in consequence of character or talents, or may 
owe to fortune. Under conceivable circumstances it may 
become his deep conviction that he is bound to deviate from 
