As a result of the attacks of the various rationalist schools this idea of a "moral faculty" has been for the most part abandoned by those who approach ethics from the Religious or Theistic standpoint, for they are far more concerned to establish the "Divine authority" and sacrosanct character of conscience than influenced by psychological or metaphysical distinctions. For the most part such writers are content to assume that "conscience" is the knowledge of one's own soul with regard to questions of right and wrong, but insist on that element of Divine Guidance which alone, they think, can give it the necessary authority and sanctity. The Rev. G. H. Richardson[17] defines conscience as "the whole personality acting ethically; or, more precisely, conscience is the reaction, pleasurable or painful, of the whole personality in response to a human or Divine standard." It is neither wholly emotional nor wholly rational, but "is sensitive to motives of which the pure reason would take no account; it is more akin to instinct than intelligence." Yet "without reason, conscience would be blind impulse, though it might feel the consciousness of obligation."[18] Clearly, then, conscience can derive little validity from intelligence; the concession to the Rationalists does not amount to much; it might almost get on without reason altogether. It is the Divine authority of conscience which, for the Theistic writer, is the factor of prime importance. "As we are bound to trust reason in the intellectual sphere, so we are bound to trust conscience in the moral sphere. To deny the authority of the one or the other is to distrust the Power in whom physical and moral law have their source. The authority of conscience is thus paramount for the individual; it will be better for me to do what is objectively wrong, but what I conscientiously believe to be right, than do what is in fact right, but what my conscience disapproves."[19] Here the writer appears to abandon his Rationalistic friends altogether; the fanatic is given free rein, his ravings are sacred. Dr. H. Rashdall, who by many is considered representative of rationalistic ethics, insists on the "objectivity of moral judgment. Feelings or emotions possess no objectivity; and 'without objectivity,' in the words of Eduard von Hartmann, 'ethic has no meaning'."[20] The all-important task for the Theistic writer is to establish the factor of Divine impulse. "Therefore we say that conscience is a fundamental form of man's personal consciousness of eternity; that ineffaceable certainty that the relation of Duty, with Responsibility and Judgment, is not a relation which stands and falls with our relations to the world and to men, but in its essence is a relation to the holy and Almighty God.... Additional force seems to be given to this way of regarding the Authority of conscience if we consider that its activity is set in motion by an impulse from the Divine Personality."[21]