ments. The self is rarely developed equally completely on every side. So the conscience may often be unduly callous in one direction, and excessively sensitive in another. One man's conscience may be exceedingly punctilious in insisting on the exact letter of religious observance, though he may have no scruple whatever in engineering commercial enterprises of doubtful morality. Another man may be thoroughly dishonest in business, and yet be exemplary in his domestic relations. These are no doubt extreme instances; but we all know people whose consciences would repudiate indignantly a temptation to steal, and yet passively acquiesce in an attempt to defraud a railway company. Such inconsistencies in the judgments of the individual conscience indicate that the self has not been perfectly unified. If it were completely harmonised, its judgments would always be absolutely consistent.
Conflicts may also take place between the conscience of one man and the conscience of his neighbour, or between one man's conscience and the public or universal conscience. The law of the land may command certain actions which an individual regards as immoral, or a man's country may be engaged in a war which he believes unjust. Is he, in the first case, to obey the State and disobey his own conscience by performing the act that is enjoined? In the second, should he stifle the judgment of his conscience, and pay taxes to maintain the war or contribute his personal services to it? Is he to hearken to the voice of his private conscience or that of the State? In such a conflict a man should always suspect the rightness of the judgment of his
