into
two--Intuitionalism and Evolutionalism.

1. _Nativism_, of which Intuitionalism is the most common form,
regards the conscience as a separate natural endowment, coeval with the
creation of man. Every individual, it is maintained, has been endowed
by nature with a distinct faculty or organ by which he can immediately
and clearly {73} pronounce upon the rightness or wrongness of his own
actions. In its most pronounced form this theory maintains that man
has not merely a general consciousness of moral distinctions, but
possesses from the very first, apart from all experience and education,
a definite and clear knowledge of the particular vices which ought to
be avoided and the particular virtues which ought to be practised.
This theory is usually connected with a form of theism which maintains
that the conscience is particularly a divine gift, and is, indeed,
God's special witness or oracle in the heart of man.

Though there would seem to be an element of truth in intuitionalism,
since man, to be man at all, must be conceived as made for God and
having that in him which points to the end or ideal of his being, still
in its most extreme form it would not be difficult to show that this
theory is untenable. It is objectionable, because it involves two
assumptions, of which the one conflicts with experience, and the other
with the psychological nature of man.

(1) Experience gives us no warrant for supposing that duty is always
the same, and that conscience is therefore exempt from change. History
shows rather that moral convictions only gradually emerge, and that the
laws and customs of one age are often repudiated by the next. What may
seem right to one man is no longer so to his descendant. History
records deeds committed in one generation in the name of conscience
which in the same name a later generation has condemned with horror.
Moreover, the possibility of a conflict between duties proves that
unconditional truth exists at no stage of moral development. There is
no law so sacred that it may not in special cases have to yield to the
sacredness of a higher law. When duties conflict, our choice cannot be
determined by any _a priori_ principle residing in ourselves. It must
be governed by that wider conception of the moral life which is to be
gained through one's previous development, and on the basis of a ripe
moral experience.[5] (2) Nor is this theory consistent with {74} the
known nature of man. We