So, if certain penalties are needlessly severe—that is to say, if a less penalty will secure equal obedience, then this also decides so severe a penalty to be unjust. In deciding on the rectitude of the penalties of human enactments, it is always assumed to be unjust to punish for any lack of knowledge and obedience when the subject had _no power_ to know and to obey. If _a choice to obey_ will not secure the act required of a free agent, then a penalty inflicted for disobedience is always regarded as unjust. The only seeming exception to this is the case where a person, by voluntary means, has deprived himself of ability to obey. But in such cases the punishment is felt to be right, not because he does not obey when he has no power, but because he has voluntarily deprived himself of this power. And he is punished for destroying his ability to obey, and not for violating the law. These things in human laws, then, are always demanded to make a penalty appear _just_ to the moral sense of mankind, namely, that the subject have power to obey, and that he has opportunity to know the law, and is not ignorant by any voluntary and improper neglect. In all questions of justice, therefore, it is important to discriminate between those penalties that are inherent as a part of the great system of the universe, and for which the Creator alone is responsible, and those additional penalties which result from voluntary institutions of which men are the authors. The next feature in our moral constitution is the susceptibility which is excited by the intellectual judgment of our own feelings and conduct as either right or wrong. In case we decide them to be right, we experience an emotion of self‐ approval which is very delightful; but if we decide that they are wrong, we experience an immediate penalty in a painful emotion called _remorse_. This emotion is always proportioned to the amount of evil done, and the consciousness that it was done knowingly and intentionally. No suffering is more keen than the highest emotions of this kind, while their pangs are often enduring and unappeasable. Sometimes there is an attending desire to inflict retribution on one’s self as a mode of alleviating this distress. This susceptibility is usually denominated _conscience_. Sometimes this word is used to include both the intellectual judgment of our conduct as right or wrong, and the consequent emotions of approval or remorse; sometimes it refers to the susceptibility alone. Either use is correct, as in the connection in which it is employed the distinction can ordinarily be easily made. This analysis of our moral constitution furnishes means for a clear definition of such terms as _obligated_, _ought_, _ought not_, and the like.