A. Conscience an accompanying knowledge.—As already intimated, conscience is not a separate faculty, like intellect, sensibility, and will, but rather a mode in which these faculties act. Like consciousness, conscience is an accompanying knowledge. Conscience is a knowing of self (including our acts and states) in connection with a moral standard, or law. Adding now the element of feeling, we may say that conscience is man’s consciousness of his own moral relations, together with a peculiar feeling in view of them. It thus involves the combined action of the intellect and of the sensibility, and that in view of a certain class of objects, viz.: right and wrong. There is no separate ethical faculty any more than there is a separate æsthetic faculty. Conscience is like taste: it has to do with moral being and relations, as taste has to do with æsthetic being and relations. But the ethical judgment and impulse are, like the æsthetic judgment and impulse, the mode in which intellect, sensibility and will act with reference to a certain class of objects. Conscience deals with the right, as taste deals with the beautiful. As consciousness (_con_ and _scio_) is a con-knowing, a knowing of our thoughts, desires and volitions in connection with a knowing of the self that has these thoughts, desires and volitions; so conscience is a con-knowing, a knowing of our moral acts and states in connection with a knowing of some moral standard or law which is conceived of as our true self, and therefore as having authority over us. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 183-185—“The condemnation of self involves self-diremption, double consciousness. Without it Kant’s categorical imperative is impossible. The one self lays down the law to the other self, judges it, threatens it. This is what is meant, when the apostle says: ‘_It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me_’ (_Rom. 7:17_).” B. Conscience discriminative and impulsive.—But we need to define more narrowly both the intellectual and the emotional elements in conscience. As respects the intellectual element, we may say that conscience is a power of judgment,—it declares our acts or states to conform, or not to conform, to law; it declares the acts or states which conform to be obligatory,—those which do not conform, to be forbidden. In other words, conscience judges: (1) This is right (or, wrong); (2) I ought (or, I ought not). In connection with this latter judgment, there comes into view the emotional element of conscience,—we feel the claim of duty; there is an inner sense that the wrong must not be done. Thus conscience is (1) discriminative, and (2) impulsive.