Before concluding this chapter, there are a few objections to be met and explanations to be made. In the first place, it may be objected that the theory I have adopted, that the moral feeling is excited only where there has been a conflict of motives, runs counter to the ordinary view, that acts proceeding from a virtuous or vicious habit are done without any struggle and almost without any consciousness of their import. I do not at all deny that a habit may become so perfect that the acts proceeding from it cease to involve any struggle between conflicting motives, but, in this case, I conceive that our approbation or disapprobation is transferred from the individual acts to the habit from which they spring, and that what we really applaud or condemn is the character rather than the actions, or at least the actions simply as indicative of the character. And the reason that we often praise or blame acts proceeding from habit more than acts proceeding from momentary impulse is that we associate such acts with a good or evil character, as the case may be, and, therefore, include the character as well as the acts in the judgment which we pass upon them. It may possibly have occurred to the reader that, in the latter part of this chapter, I have been somewhat inconsistent in referring usually to the social sanction of praise and blame rather than to the distinctively moral sanction of self-approbation and self-disapprobation. I have employed this language solely for the sake of convenience, and to avoid the cumbrous phraseology which the employment of the other phrases would sometimes have occasioned. In a civilized and educated community, the social sentiment may, on almost all points except those which involve obscure or delicate considerations of morality, be taken to be identical with the moral sentiment of the most reflective members of the society, and hence in the tolerably obvious instances which I have selected there was no need to draw any distinction between the two, and I have felt myself at liberty to be guided purely by considerations of convenience. All that I have said of the praise or blame, the applause or censure, of others, of course, admits of being transferred to the feelings with which, on reflexion, we regard our own acts.