After all, these great principles of morality are more commended than practised. As to Conscience checking us in these breaches, making them fewer than they would otherwise be, men may arrive at such a conscience, or self-restraining sentiment, in other ways than by an innate endowment. Some men may come to assent to moral rules from a knowledge of their value as means to ends. Others may take up the same view as a part of their education. However the persuasion is come by, it will serve as a conscience; which conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of the rectitude or pravity of our actions. How could men with serenity and confidence transgress rules stamped upon their inmost soul? Look at the practices of nations civilized and uncivilized; at the robberies, murders, rapes of an army sacking a town; at the legalized usages of nations, the destruction of infants and of aged parents for personal convenience; cannibalism; the most monstrous forms of unchastity; the fashionable murder named Duelling. Where are the innate principles of Justice, Piety, Gratitude, Equity, Chastity? If we read History, and cast our glance over the world, we shall scarcely find any rule of Morality (excepting such as are necessary to hold society together, and these too with great limitations) but what is somewhere or other set aside, and an opposite established, by whole societies of men. Men may break a law without disowning it; but it is inconceivable that a whole nation should publicly reject and renounce what every one of them, certainly and infallibly, knows to be a law. Whatever practical principle is innate, must be known to every one to be just and good. The generally allowed breach of any rule anywhere must be held to prove that it is not innate. If there be any rule having a fair claim to be imprinted by nature, it is the rule that Parents should preserve and cherish their children. If such a principle be innate, it must be found regulating practice everywhere; or, at the lowest, it must be known and assented to. But it is very far from having been uniformly practised, even among enlightened nations. And as to its being an innate truth, known to all men, that also is untrue. Indeed, the terms of it are not intelligible without other knowledge. The statement, 'it is the duty of parents to preserve their children,' cannot be understood without a Law; a Law requires a Lawmaker, and Reward or Punishment. And as punishment does not always follow in this life, nothing less than a recognition of Divine Law will suffice; in other words, there must be intuitions of God, Law, Obligation, Punishment, and a Future Life: every one of which may be, and is, deemed to be innate. It is incredible that men, if all these things were stamped on their minds, could deliberately offend against them; still more, that rulers should silently connive at such transgressions.