(2) But if conscience can be perverted it may also be _improved_. The education is twofold, social and individual. Through society, says Green, personality is actualised. 'No individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a society to make it for him.'[9] There is no such thing as a purely individual conscience. Man can only realise himself, come to his best, in relation to others. The conditions amid which a man is born and reared--the home, the school, the church, the state--are the means by which the conscience is exercised and educated. But the individual is not passive. He has also a part to play; and the whole task of man may be regarded as an endeavour to make his conscience effective in life. The New Testament writers refrain from speaking of the conscience as an unerring and perfect organ. Their language implies rather the possibility of its gradual enlightenment; and St. Paul specially dwells upon the necessity of 'growing in spiritual {78} knowledge and perception.' As life advances moral judgment may be modified and corrected by fuller knowledge, and the perception of a particular form of conduct as good may yield to the experience of something better. 2. 'It is one of the most wonderful things,' says Professor Wundt, 'about moral development, that it unites so many conditions of subordinate value in the accomplishment of higher results,'[10] and the worth of morality is not endangered because the grounds of its realisation in special cases do not always correspond in elevation to the moral ideas. The conscience is not an independent faculty which issues its mandates irrespective of experience. Its judgments are always conditioned by motives. The moral imperatives of conscience may be grouped under four heads:[11] (1) _External constraints_, including all forms of punishment for immoral actions and the social disadvantages which such actions involve. These can only produce the lowest grade of morality, outward propriety, the mere appearance of virtue which has only a negative value in so far as it avoids what is morally offensive. (2) _Internal constraints_, consisting of influences excited by the example of others, by public opinion and habits formed through education and training. (3) _Self-satisfaction_, originating in the agent's own consciousness. It may be a sense of pleasure or feeling of self-approbation: or higher still, the idea of duty for its own sake, commonly called 'conscientiousness.' (4) _The ideal of life_, the highest imperative of conscience. Here the nobility of life, as a whole, the supreme life-purpose, gives meaning and incentive to each and every action. The ideal of life is not, however, something static and completed, given once and for all. It grows with the enlightenment of the individual and the development of humanity. The consciousness of every age comprehends it in certain laws and ends of life. The highest form of the ideal finds its