Greater importance should not be attached to the psychic environment of a child than to its inherent hereditary qualities, which irrevocably determine its native tendencies and the limits of its ultimate possibilities. Environment may modify or enhance a child's inherent characteristics in an infinite variety of ways, but cannot nullify them or transcend by one iota the limit of its potential development. In a previous chapter we discussed the view of those who regard moral judgment as an emotion or intuition of the "good" and the "right," and who find justification for our rules of conduct by referring them to the Divine Will, which is supposed to inspire them by means of the "moral organ" or conscience. We believe that a correct appreciation of psychology makes it abundantly clear that although there are many impulsive, instinctive and emotional factors totally unconnected with any rational or intellectual process which do, indeed, affect our moral judgments and give rise to ethical conventions, these factors can give no _validity_ to moral codes; and that, stripped of the sentiments and emotions with which they are obscured, moral systems must be judged by principles of utility, while they are enforceable according to the universality with which they are desired. It is, moreover, equally absurd to look upon moral values as ultimate and irreducible categories of good and evil, irrevocably codified by an omniscient Deity for the conduct of humanity for all time, and supposedly accessible to the intelligence of all who consult their conscience. This latter position, which is maintained by Theistic "Rationalists," leads to precisely the same "conclusion" as the arguments of the "Intuitionalists," the only difference between them being that the conscience of the "Rationalists" is a thinking and intellectual organ, while the conscience of the Intuitionalists is an emotional and instinctive organ. But this amicable convergence is not accidental but a _sine qua non_, since in either case the object aimed at is identically the same, that object being the establishment of conscience, dependent on morality, on a pinnacle of ethical omniscience and infallibility, where its authority shall be unquestionable and absolute. They may well be left to their quarrel, which in reality amounts to little more than verbal quibbling.