Not less dogmatic than Fichte's assertion that conscience never deceives us, is the view which regards a system of Ethics as merely the science of the forms of society and of outward acts, and thus declares conscience to be without authority in comparison with outer circumstances and their demands. The law which we obey must always express itself in the form of conscience. The light which illumines for us all other things must be within ourselves. Here we perceive the possibility of a conflict between Subjective Ethics and Objective Ethics, between the two principles upon which Ethics is founded. There can be no other solution to the problem than that we shall follow the command of conscience, provided it speaks clearly and after sufficient deliberation. It may be added that conscience can correct and control itself, the later and more experienced conscience criticising the earlier. As long as the individual acts according to his best conviction, he is morally healthy; hence, from an ethical point of view, a pernicious action carried out under the conviction that it is good is to be preferred to a good action performed with the conviction that it is bad. In the former case, the spring is pure; in the latter it is corrupt. Only he who has courage to make mistakes can accomplish anything great. It is not the cold and narrow, but those who are zealous for the true and good, who thus err. The power of self-correction can be developed only when some definite principle or criterion may be found. Such a principle is that of welfare. The problem of the application of this principle to action is, however, like that of the application of the principle of causality to actual phenomena, an endless one. In close relation to the concept of Authority stands that of Sanction. The Authority commands or forbids, the Sanction enables the command or prohibition to remain in force. The sanction consists in the pain or pleasure connected with the observation or transgression of the command, in the reward or punishment which one brings on oneself through one's action, in the heaven or hell which one approaches by the action. It is only, however, when the authority itself is an outward one that the sanction holds this outward relation to the action. In this outward form it has no immediate ethical significance. The ethical character of an action is dependent, in subjective regard, on its origin in the intention of the performer, in objective regard, on its harmony with the principle of welfare. What ethical significance could it have that here a feeling of pain or pleasure not arising from the action itself, is added to it? The outer sanction of reward and punishment is thus but an educating sanction. The inner sanction consists in a feeling of harmony and unity with one's own highest convictions, of consistency between one's ideas and one's actual willing. Thus arises an inner peace that may be stronger than all contradiction and opposition from without.