The great implication in this necessity, as we shall hereafter see in examining the nature of virtue, is that the principle of righteousness or the law of duty is something that belongs to the objective order of the world as constituted by God, a divine reality permanent and immutable, not produced but perceived by the conscience. It is not made by man but finds him--finds him through the intelligence by which he is informed of the realities to which he must adjust his life. Moral law stands for a reality that rays itself into view in the human reason whether men will or not. The intuitions of it do not come at the call, or desire, or even at the consent of man. The law revealed stands independent of the individual's personality or choices and asserts itself over him. While this is true of the law revealed, the perception of the law becomes a necessity with the moral agent that is normally endowed and developed. Man does not furnish the moral law to himself. He is not the giver of it, but the recipient. The conscience, therefore, is an open window of our being, through which the objective law of righteousness to which the Creator has adjusted our nature and the constitution of the universe may be discerned by us, a sphere of reality enfolding us, with which our freedom is to harmonize our conduct. Francis Newman has admirably marked the position of this conscience-power in our constitution: "This energy of life within is ours, yet it is not we. It is in us, belongs to us, yet we cannot control it, It acts without our bidding, and when we do not think of it, Nor will it cease its acting at our command, or otherwise obey us, But while it recalls from evil, and reproaches us for evil, And is not silenced by our effort, surely it is not _we_; Yet it pervades mankind, as one life pervades the trees."[20] The reason of these intuitions of the conscience is that back of it and around it and above it is a realm of moral obligations which must, without contingency, be made known to us, that we may order our lives aright. ==Erroneous Theory.==