dictated, not by his heart, but by his knowledge of the law. And the
voice of conscience, whatever feelings it may stir, must be an
intellectual utterance, and, to be worth anything in a case of
difficulty, a reasoned conclusion, based on observation of facts, and
application of principles, and consultation with moral theologians and
casuists. A subjective and emotional standard of right and wrong is as
treacherous and untrustworthy as the emotional justification of those
good people, who come of a sudden to "feel converted."

9. It would be unnecessary, except for the wrong-headedness of
philosophers, to observe that conscience requires educating. As moral
virtue is a habit of appetite, rational or irrational, a formation
resulting from frequent acts; and as the child needs to be aided and
assisted from without towards the performance of such acts, in order
to overcome the frequent resistance of appetite to reason (c. v., s.
ii., n. 4, p. 71): so the springs of conscience are certain
intellectual habits, whereby the subject is cognisant of the
principles of natural law, and of their bearing on his own conduct,
habits which, like the habits of moral virtue, require to be formed by
acts from within and succour from without, since merely the rudiments
of the habit are supplied by nature. Even the first principles of
morality want formulating and pointing out to children, like the
axioms of geometry. The mother tells her little one: "Ernest, or
Frank, be a good boy:" while the schoolmaster explains to Master
Ernest that two straight lines cannot possibly enclose a space. There
is something in the boy's mind that goes along with and bears out both
the teaching of his master and his mother's exhortation: something
that says within him: "To be sure, those lines can't enclose a space:"
"Certainly, I ought to be good." It is not merely on authority that he
accepts these propositions. His own understanding welcomes and