of the
multitudinous phenomena of our mental life. Hence we arrive at a
definition of conscience as "the practical dictate of the reason in us
prescribing obedience to the good and avoidance of the evil". Two
elements, therefore, are discernible in this definition: first,
reason, as such, pointing out what is good and evil; and, secondly,
reason, as conscience, ordaining that the good is to be done and the
evil left undone--a distinction to be carefully borne in mind when the
problem of conflicting consciences has to be faced; how it comes, for
instance, that morality appears to differ in different countries, and
even in the same individual at different periods of his life.

But of that nothing further need be said now, but we may immediately
pass on to see in what sense conscience, thus explained, is, in the
first place, to be accounted the voice of God.

Outside a philosophy avowedly atheist it seems difficult to understand
how there can be any doubt that the eternal distinction between right
and wrong betokens the presence in this world of men of a supreme power
and a supreme mind. "How comes it," let us ask with Emerson, "that the
universe is so constituted," that that which we instinctively recognise
as good makes for the individual and the general welfare, and that
which we must perforce reprobate as evil works uniformly disaster? We
recognise that things are unalterably so ordered that by no possibility
could lying, slander, malice and hatred be other than intrinsically
evil, and their opposites be other than essentially good. But how is
it that things are so ordered? Whence these uniformities of
approbation and disapprobation? Is there any answer conceivable but
that the power responsible for the world is a moral power? Whence is
existence itself but from the subsistent source of all being? Whence
is life but from one ever-lasting source? Whence is intelligence but
from the world's Soul, which is the soul of men? And towering above
being, above life and reason, is conscience, the supreme guide, the
light enlightening every man that cometh into this world.

Luce intellettual, piena d'amore,
Amor di vero ben pien di letizia,
Letizia die trascende ogni dolzore.

What is this "light intellectual," this "love of the true," so
unutterably blissful as to quiet all pain and sorrow, but the radiance
of the eternal falling athwart the shadows of this lower life? What is
this miraculous monitor-