man is as fully assured as of
his seeing, hearing or smelling. But though the former assurance does
not differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in
the kind; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is
essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in
any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will,
dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses
impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses
we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned,
we are passive;--but in the fact of the conscience we are not only
agents, but it is by this alone, that we know ourselves to be such; nay,
that our very passiveness in this latter is an act of passiveness, and
that we are patient ('patientes')--not, as in the other case, 'simply'
passive. The result is, the consciousness of responsibility; and the
proof is afforded by the inward experience of the diversity between
regret and remorse.

If I have sound ears, and my companion speaks to me with a due
proportion of voice, I may persuade him that I did not hear, but cannot
deceive myself. But when my conscience speaks to me, I can, by repeated
efforts, render myself finally insensible; to which add this other
difference in the case of conscience, namely, that to make myself deaf
is one and the same thing with making my conscience dumb, till at length
I become unconscious of my conscience. Frequent are the instances in
which it is suspended, and as it were drowned, in the inundation of the
appetites, passions and imaginations, to which I have resigned myself,
making use of my will in order to abandon my free-will; and there are
not, I fear, examples wanting of the conscience being utterly destroyed,
or of the passage of wickedness into madness;--that species of madness,
namely, in which the reason is lost. For so long as the reason
continues, so long must the conscience exist either as a good
conscience, or as a bad conscience.

It appears then, that even the very first step, that the initiation of
the process, the becoming conscious of a conscience, partakes of the
nature of an act. It is an act, in and by which we take upon ourselves
an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty; and this
fealty or fidelity implying the power of being unfaithful, it is the
first and fundamental sense of Faith. It is likewise the commencement of
exper