noticed, that if Christian Ethics does draw attention to those elements in virtues which are good in themselves, it is by no means alone in this. The Ethics of Plato are distinguished by upholding, far more clearly and consistently than any other system, the view that intrinsic value belongs exclusively to those states of mind which consist in love of what is good or hatred of what is evil. =108.= But (_c_) the Ethics of Christianity are distinguished from those of Plato by emphasizing the value of one particular motive--that which consists in the emotion excited by the idea, not of any intrinsically good consequences of the action in question, nor even of the action itself, but by that of its rightness. This idea of abstract ‘rightness’ and the various degrees of the specific emotion excited by it are what constitute the specifically ‘moral sentiment’ or ‘conscience.’ An action seems to be most properly termed ‘internally right[23],’ solely in virtue of the fact that the agent has previously regarded it as right: the idea of ‘rightness’ must have been present to his mind, but need not necessarily have been among his motives. And we mean by a ‘conscientious’ man, one who, when he deliberates, always has this idea in his mind, and does not act until he believes that his action is right. [23] This sense of the term must be carefully distinguished from that in which the agent’s intention may be said to be ‘right,’ if only the results he intended would have been the best possible. The presence of this idea and its action as a motive certainly seem to have become more common objects of notice and commendation owing to the influence of Christianity; but it is important to observe that there is no ground for the view, which Kant implies, that it is the _only_ motive which the New Testament regards as intrinsically valuable. There seems little doubt that when Christ tells us to ‘Love our neighbours as ourselves,’ He did not mean merely what Kant calls ‘practical love‘--beneficence of which the _sole_ motive is the idea of its rightness, or the emotion caused by that idea. Among the ‘inward dispositions’ of which the New Testament inculcates the value, there are certainly included what Kant terms mere ‘natural inclinations,’ such as pity, etc.