no longer produce any effect on this feeling, then his humanity
would be dissolved (as it were by chemical laws) into mere animality
and be irrevocably confounded with the mass of other physical
beings. But we have no special sense for (moral) good and evil any
more than for truth, although such expressions are often used; but
we have a susceptibility of the free elective will for being moved
by pure practical reason and its law; and it is this that we call
the moral feeling.



B. OF CONSCIENCE



Similarly, conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is not a
duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it originally
within him. To be bound to have a conscience would be as much as to
say to be under a duty to recognize duties. For conscience is
practical reason which, in every case of law, holds before a man his
duty for acquittal or condemnation; consequently it does not refer
to an object, but only to the subject (affecting the moral feeling
by its own act); so that it is an inevitable fact, not an obligation
and duty. When, therefore, it is said, "This man has no conscience,"
what is meant is that he pays no heed to its dictates. For if he
really had none, he would not take credit to himself for anything done
according to duty, nor reproach himself with violation of duty, and
therefore he would be unable even to conceive the duty of having a
conscience.