No human being, abandoned entirely to native promptings, is
ever found to manifest a sense of right and wrong. As a general rule,
the strength of the conscience depends on the care bestowed on its
cultivation. Although we have had to recognize primitive distinctions
among men as to the readiness to take on moral training, still, the
better the training, the stronger will be the conscientious
determinations.

But this admission has the effect of reducing the part performed by
nature to a small and uncertain amount. Even if there were native
preferences, they might be completely overborne and reversed by an
assiduous education. The difference made by inculcation is so great,
that it practically amounts to everything. A voice so feeble as to be
overpowered by foreign elements would do no credit to nature.

7. Thirdly, Moral right and wrong is not so much a simple, indivisible
property, as an extensive Code of regulations, which cannot even be
understood without a certain maturity of the intelligence.

If is not possible to sum up the whole field of moral right and wrong,
so as to bring it within the scope of a single limited perception,
like the perception of resistance, or of colour. In regard to some of
the alleged intuitions at the foundation of our knowledge, as for
example time and space, there is a comparative simplicity and unity,
rendering their innate origin less disputable. No such simplicity can
be assigned in the region of duty.

After the subject of morals has been studied in the detail, it has,
indeed, been found practicable to comprise the whole, by a kind of
generalization, in one comprehensive recognition of regard to our
fellows. But, in the first place, this is far from a primitive or an
intuitive suggestion of the mind. It came at a late stage of human
history, and is even regarded as a part of Revelation. In the second
place, this high generality must be accompanied with detailed
applications to particular cases and circumstances. Life is full of
conflicting demands, and there must be special rules to adjust these
various demands. We have to be told that country is greater than
family; that temporary interests are to succumb to more enduring, and
so on.

Supposing the Love of our Neighbour to unfold in detail, as it
expresses in sum, the whole of morality, this is only another name for
our Sympathetic, Benevolent, or Disinterested regards, into which
therefore Conscience would be resolved, as it