eaking, because conscience often over-rides
instinct."

"I am confused," said Lestrange. "I mean by conscience the thing which says
'You _ought!_' That is what seems to me to prove the existence of God,
that there is a sense of a moral law which one does not invent, and which
is sometimes very inconveniently aggressive."

"Yes, that is all right," said Father Payne, "but how is it when there are
two 'oughts,' as there often are? A man ought to work--and he ought not to
overwork--something else has to be called in to decide where one 'ought'
begins and the other ends. There is a perpetual balancing of moral claims.
Your conscience tells you to do two things which are mutually
exclusive--both are right in the abstract. What are you to do then?"

"I suppose that reason comes in there," said Lestrange.

"Then reason is the ultimate guide?" said Father Payne.

"Oh, Father, you are darkening counsel," said Lestrange.

"No, no," said Father Payne, "I am just trying to face facts."

"Well, then," said Lestrange, "what is the ultimate thing?"

"The ultimate thing," said Father Payne, "is of course the thing you call
yourself--but the ultimate instinct is probably a sense of proportion--a
sense of beauty, if you like!"

"But how does that work out in practice?" said Vincent. "It seems to me to
be a mere argument about names and titles. You are using conscience as the
sense of right and wrong, and, as you say, they often seem to have
conflicting claims. Lestrange used it in the further sense of the thing
which ultimately decides your course. It is right to be philanthropic, it
is right to be artistic--they may conflict; but something ultimately tells
you what you _can_ do, which is really more important than what you
_ought to_ do."

"That is right," said Father Payne, "I think the test is simply this--that
whenever you feel yourself paralysed, and your natural growth arrested by
your obedience to any one claim--instinct, reason, conscience, whatever it
is--the ultimate power cuts the knot, and tells you unfailingly where your
real life lies. That is the real failure, when owing to some habit, some
dread, some shrinking, you do not follow your real life. That, it seems to
me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done
harm. The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature,
and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses--celibate
saints who ought to have bee