custom, the agent would thereby lose the freedom in the choice of
his maxims, which freedom is the character of an action done from
duty.

ON_CONSCIENCE

ON CONSCIENCE



The consciousness of an internal tribunal in man (before which
"his thoughts accuse or excuse one another") is CONSCIENCE.

Every man has a conscience, and finds himself observed by an
inward judge which threatens and keeps him in awe (reverence
combined with fear); and this power which watches over the laws within
him is not something which he himself (arbitrarily) makes, but it is
incorporated in his being. It follows him like his shadow, when he
thinks to escape. He may indeed stupefy himself with pleasures and
distractions, but cannot avoid now and then coming to himself or
awaking, and then he at once perceives its awful voice. In his
utmost depravity, he may, indeed, pay no attention to it, but he
cannot avoid hearing it.

Now this original intellectual and (as a conception of duty) moral
capacity, called conscience, has this peculiarity in it, that although
its business is a business of man with himself, yet he finds himself
compelled by his reason to transact it as if at the command of another
person. For the transaction here is the conduct of a trial (causa)
before a tribunal. But that he who is accused by his conscience should