Conscience is a fact of common experience. It will be universally recognised that there is within the human consciousness some principle, some norm or measure, apparently unbiassed and involuntary, which seems to claim authority in regulating or attempting to regulate what is known as moral conduct. In other words, there is something of the Jekyll and Hyde in every man, and broadly speaking Jekyll is the personification of the voice of Conscience. But while there is universal recognition of the fact, there is less unanimity as to the precise significance of the fact of conscience. In a broad division there are two opposite views, in one of which conscience appears as rational, in the other as emotional. The latter is the view adopted by modern experimental psychologists in their attempt to analyse ‘moral consciousness.’

‘Moral consciousness’ is the somewhat undefined name given nowadays to the complexity of emotions and instincts which precede, accompany and follow a moral act, producing feelings of ‘moral’ satisfaction or disquietude as the case may be. Upon examination, however, it is found that all these emotions and instincts are placed in the order of bodily reactions to stimuli. They are confined, in other words, almost entirely to the material order, and in effect the highest and especially human faculties, namely reason and rational will, are disregarded or eliminated. This position, it should be noted, is justified by the circumstances in the sense that it represents the findings of purely experimental psychology. No one should be so foolish as to deny the authority of any science within its own sphere. It is only when any science presumes to argue to conclusions outside its own sphere that it lays itself open to criticism from without.