am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do
unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a
categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the
maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and
outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising
therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings.
This, I say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a
different way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance
presented by my outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act
of being conscious of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact
of which all men either are or ought to be conscious; a fact, the
ignorance of which constitutes either the non-personality of the
ignorant, or the guilt; in which latter case the ignorance is
equivalent to knowledge wilfully darkened. I know that I possess
this knowledge as a man, and not as Samuel Taylor Coleridge; hence,
knowing that consciousness of this fact is the root of all other
consciousness, and the only practical contradistinction of man from
the brutes, we name it the conscience, by the natural absence or
presumed presence of which the law, both Divine and human, determines
whether X Y Z be a thing or a person; the conscience being that which
never to have had places the objects in the same order of things as
the brutes, for example, idiots, and to have lost which implies
either insanity or apostasy. Well, this we have affirmed is a fact
of which every honest man is as fully assured as of his seeing,
hearing, or smelling. But though the former assurance does not
differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in the
kind; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is
essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in
any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will
dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the