In connection with this subject, it is important to recognize the distinction that exists in regard to two classes of right and wrong actions. The first class includes those which are wrong in their nature and in all supposable cases, such, for example, as the wanton infliction of needless pain, or the breach of plighted faith, or the returning of love and kindness with ungrateful treatment. In all possible suppositions, the mind revolts from such actions as wrong and deserving of penalties. It is this class of actions which, without any reasoning, the mind never fails to disapprove, and to desire should be visited with retributive penalties. The other class of right and wrong acts derive their estimate solely from the circumstances in which they occur. For example, a man is angry and beats a little child. Now the question whether his feelings and action are right or wrong depends entirely on circumstances. If the child has done no evil and the person knew it, his feelings and actions are wrong. But if the person is a father correcting his child for some heinous fault and with only a suitable degree of anger, then the feeling and action are right. There is another mode of estimating conduct by which the same act may have two opposite characters, according to the _relation_ in which it is regarded. For example, a good parent may give wrong medicine to his child, or punish an innocent one, believing him to be guilty. In such cases the act is right as it respects the motive or intention, and wrong as it respects the nature of the action. It is sometimes the case that a man may do a right action with a bad motive, and a wrong action with a good motive. Thus the same act is right in one relation, and wrong in another. It is important that this distinction should be borne in mind. 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.