So much, then, is certain. The entire imagery--that of a judicial drama--whereby Kant depicts conscience is wholly unessential and in no way peculiar to it; although he keeps this figure, as if it were proper to the subject, right through to the end, in order finally to deduce certain conclusions from it. As a matter of fact it is a sufficiently common form, which our thoughts easily take when we consider any circumstance of real life. It is due for the most part to the conflict of opposing motives which usually spring up, and which are successively weighed and tested by our reflecting reason. And no difference is made whether these motives are moral or egoistic in their nature, nor whether our deliberations are concerned with some action in the past, or in the future. Now if we strip from Kant's exposition its dress of legal metaphor, which is only an optional dramatic appendage, the surrounding nimbus with all its imposing effect immediately disappears as well, and there remains nothing but the fact that sometimes, when we think over our actions, we are seized with a certain self-dissatisfaction, which is marked by a special characteristic. It is with our conduct _per se_ that we are discontented, not with its result, and this feeling does not, as in every other case in which we regret the stupidity of our behaviour, rest on egoistic grounds. For on these occasions the cause of our dissatisfaction is precisely because we have been too egoistic, because we have taken too much thought for ourselves, and not enough for our neighbour; or perhaps even because, without any resulting advantage, we have made the misery of others an object in itself. That we may be dissatisfied with ourselves, and saddened by reason of sufferings which we have inflicted, not undergone, is a plain fact and impossible to be denied. The connection of this with the only ethical basis that can stand an adequate test we shall examine further on. But Kant, like a clever special pleader, tried by magnifying and embellishing the original _datum_ to make all that he possibly could of it, in order to prepare a very broad foundation for his Ethics and Moral Theology. [1] Both words are, of course, derived from _wissen = scire_ = _εἱδέναι_.--(_Translator_.) [2] Cf. Horace's _conscire sibi, pallescere culpa: Epist_. I. 1, 61. To be conscious of having done wrong, to turn pale at the thought of the crime. [3] _Συνείδησις = consciousness_ (of right or wrong done).--(_Translator._) [4] The celebrated Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, which came into prominence about A.D. 1220. In A.D. 1335 the Archbishop of Cologne was appointed head of all the Fehme benches in Westphalia by the Emperor Charles IV. The reader will remember the description of the trial scene in Scott's _Anne of Geierstein_. Perhaps the Court of Star Chamber comes nearest to it in English History.--(_Translator._)