Conscience being the practical judgment which in each particular case decides the right and the wrong, one can ask of man only one thing: namely, to act according to his conscience. At the moment of action there is no other rule. But one must take great care lest by subtle doubts, he obscures either within himself or in others the clear and distinct decisions of conscience. In fact, men often, to divert themselves from the right when they wish to do certain bad actions, fight their own conscience with sophisms. Under the influence of these sophisms, conscience becomes _erroneous_; that is to say, it ends by taking good for evil and evil for good, and this is even one of the punishments of those who follow the path of vice: they become at last incapable of discerning between right and wrong. When it is said of a man that _he has no conscience_, it is not meant that he is really deprived of it (else he were not a man); but that he has fallen into the habit of not consulting it or of holding its decisions in contempt. By _ignorant conscience_ we mean that conscience which does wrong because it has not yet learned to know what is right. Thus, a child tormenting animals does not always do so out of bad motives: he does not know or does not think that he hurts them. In fact, it is with good as it is with evil; the child is already good or bad before it is able to discern between the one or the other. This is what is called the state of _innocence_, which in some respects is conscience asleep. But this state cannot last; the child's conscience, and in general the conscience of all men, must be enlightened. This is the progress of human reason which every day teaches us better to know the difference between good and evil. It sometimes happens that one is in some respects in doubt between two indications of conscience; not, of course, between duty and passion, which is the highest moral combat, but between two or more duties. This is what is called a _doubting_ or _perplexed_ conscience. In such a case the simplest rule to follow, when it is practicable, is the one expressed by that celebrated maxim: _When in doubt, abstain_. In cases where it is impossible to absolutely abstain, and where it becomes necessary not only to act but to choose, the rule should always be to choose that part which favors least our interests, for we may always suppose that that which causes our conscience to doubt, is an interested, unobserved motive. If there is no private interest in the matter either on the one side or the other, there remains nothing better to do than to decide according to circumstances. But it is very rare that conscience ever finds itself in such an absolute state of doubt, and there are almost always more reasons on the one side than on the other. The simplest and most general rule in such a case is to chose what seems most probable.