The preceding observations, on Conscience, I leave nearly as they stood in the second edition of this volume. Since the publication of that edition, I have seen various discussions of this important question, but have found nothing to alter the opinion I have expressed, respecting the nature and the authority of conscience as an original principle in our moral constitution; and I see no system by which we can escape from the numerous difficulties surrounding every other view of the subject. In particular, I cannot perceive what is gained by those who refer our moral decisions to a process of reason or judgment alone. For by judgment, in the ordinary and recognised acceptation of the term, I can understand nothing more than a power of comparing two or more facts or impressions together, and tracing their relations. When we apply such a mental process to a question of morals, it can amount to nothing more than a comparison of our conduct with some standard. If those who hold the doctrine referred to, mean any thing more than this,--if they allow the mind a power of moral decision independently of any such standard, then this is precisely what we mean by conscience, and the controversy resolves itself, like not a few that have gone before it, into a dispute about a name. If they do not allow the mind such a power, it then becomes them to say, what is the standard by which its moral judgments are to be formed, and whence it is derived. It appears, I think, distinctly, that it can be derived only from one of two sources. It must either be received through divine revelation; or it must be the result of our speculations respecting utility, in one or other of the forms in which that doctrine is presented to us. There does not appear to be any middle course; and accordingly some late writers, who reject the latter system, while they do not admit the authority of conscience, seem to refer our moral impressions entirely to the will of the Deity as made known to us by revelation. I have formerly stated what seem to me to be insuperable objections to this doctrine. It appears, indeed, to be distinctly opposed by the very words of Scripture, which clearly recognise a power, or a process in the mind by which "those who are without law," that is, without a revelation, "are a law unto themselves, their consciences bearing witness, and their thoughts accusing or else excusing one another."