With those whose defect is rigidity rather than instability, conscience may exist and may control the life; the trouble with it is, that it is not in key with the consciences of other people. There is an original poverty of the impulses that extends to any result that can be worked out of them. It may appear startling to some to assert that conscience may dictate the wrong, but such is quite clearly the fact, if we identify the right with some standard of conduct accepted among people of broad sympathies. Conscience is the only possible moral guide—any external authority can work morally upon us only through conscience—but it always partakes of the limitations of one’s character, and so far as that is degenerate the idea of right is degenerate also. As a matter of fact, the very worst men of the hard, narrow, fanatical, or brutal sorts, often live at peace with their consciences. I feel sure that anyone who reflects imaginatively upon the characters of people he has known of this sort will agree that such is the case. A bad conscience implies mental division, inconsistency between thought and deed, and men of this sort are often quite at one with themselves. The usurer who grinds the faces of the poor, the unscrupulous speculator who causes the ruin of innocent investors to aggrandize himself, the fanatical anarchist who stabs a king or shoots a president, the Kentucky mountaineer who regards murderous revenge as a duty, the assaulter who causes pictures commemorative of his crimes to be tattooed on his skin, are diverse examples of wrong-doers whose consciences not only do not punish, but often instigate their ill deeds.