the peculiar word TASTE, so for our judgments of actions, with the peculiar emotions which accompany them, we use the word CONSCIENCE. It is not a new word; it is as old as Periander and Bias;[296.1] it has been used {297} by both heathens and Christians for more than two thousand years; and there is no reason why it should be abolished. The ignoring of its compound character by incurious people can do no harm; its analysis into practical reason and passion by the more curious can do little good. When, on the other hand, it is declared generally to be the mere product of association, a great deal of harm may be done; for from this doctrine a consistent one-sided moralist may prove that morals are the mere creatures of habit, fashion, fancy, and caprice, as readily and with precisely the same warrant that Alison proved that beauty is an accidental product of the same unreasoning elements. What we ought to say is simply this--there is an enlightened conscience, and there is an unenlightened conscience; neither of these can act independently of associations; for associations supply the bonds by which the materials of thought and feeling are bound into separate parcels; but the difference is this: in the enlightened conscience feelings and actions are bound together by associations over which cultivated Reason has exercised a control; in the unenlightened conscience, where the emotions connected with the performance of certain actions are the crude product of all sorts of random influences, it is natural that moral judgments should exhibit all sorts of inadequacy, perversity, and absurdity. To a conscience so constituted the neglect of a piece of insignificant silly ceremonial may cause more pain than the commission of a murder.