2. _The Loyal Conscience._ But just as the mind, which seems at first to have the facts and features of the world poured into itself as a passive vessel, comes in time through its own experience to appreciate something of their meaning, and, to some extent, to verify them for itself; so the mind in its moral relations. Without forming any critical theory of the institutions and codes which are forming character, without even considering whether they are what they should be, the individual yet comes at least to a practical recognition that it is in these institutions that he gets his satisfactions, and through these codes that he is protected. He identifies himself, his own life, with the social forms and ideals in which he lives, and repels any attack upon them as he would an attack upon himself. The demands which the existing institutions make upon him are not felt as the coercions of a despot, but as expressions of his own will, and requiring loyalty as such. The conventional conscience, if it does not grow into this, tends to become slavish, while an intelligence which practically realizes, although without continual reflection, the _significance_ of conventional morality is _free_ in its convictions and service. 3. _The Independent or Reflective Conscience._ The intelligence may not simply appropriate, as its own, conventions embodied in current institutions and codes, but may _reflect_ upon them. It may ask: What is this institution of family, property for? Does the institution in its present form work as it should work, or is some modification required? Does this rule which is now current embody the true needs of the situation, or is it an antiquated expression of by-gone relations? What is the true spirit of existing institutions, and what sort of conduct does this spirit demand? Here, in a word, we have the same relation to the ethical world, that we have in physical science to the external world. Intelligence is not content, on its theoretical side, with having facts impressed upon it by direct contact or through language; it is not content with coming to feel for itself the value of the truths so impressed. It assumes an independent attitude, putting itself over against nature and cross-questioning her. It proposes its own ideas, its own theories and hypotheses, and manipulates facts to see if this rational meaning can be verified. It criticises what passes as truth, and pushes on to more adequate statement.