on that always brings
down punishment be associated with the pain and the dread of
punishment? Such an association is inevitably formed, and becomes at
least a part, and a very important part, of the sense of duty; nay, it
would of itself, after a certain amount of repetition, be adequate to
restrain for ever the performance of the action, thus attaining the
end of morality.

There may be various ways of evoking and forming the moral sentiment,
but the one way most commonly trusted to, and never altogether
dispensed with, is the associating of pain, that is, punishment, with
the actions that are disallowed. Punishment is held out as the
consequence of performing certain actions; every individual is made to
taste of it; its infliction is one of the most familiar occurrences of
every-day life. Consequently, whatever else may be present in the
moral sentiment, this fact of the connexion of pain with forbidden
actions must enter into it with an overpowering prominence. Any
natural or primitive impulse in the direction of duty must be very
marked and apparent, in order to divide with this communicated bias
the direction of our conduct. It is for the supporters of innate
distinctions to point out any concurring impetus (apart from the
Prudential and Sympathetic regards) sufficiently important to cast
these powerful associations into a secondary or subordinate position.

By a familiar effect of Contiguous Association, the dread of
punishment clothes the forbidden act with a feeling of aversion, which
in the end persists of its own accord, and without reference to the
punishment. Actions that have long been connected in the mind with
pains and penalties, come to be contemplated with a _disinterested_
repugnance; they seem to give pain on their own account. This is a
parallel, from the side of pain, of the acquired attachment to money.
Now, when, by such transference, a self-subsisting sentiment of
aversion has been created, the conscience seems to be detached from
all external sanctions, and to possess an isolated footing in the
mind. It has passed through the stage of reference to authority, and
has become a law to itself. But no conscience ever arrives at the
independent standing, without first existing in the reflected and
dependent stage.

We must never omit from the composition of the Conscience the primary
impulses of Self-Interest and Sympathy, which in minds strongly alive
to one or other, always count for a powerfu