shaped. Consequently, upon such an assumption of design, there is no logical difficulty in Butler's affirmation that conscience itself is a source of obligation; and there is no "vicious circle" in the argument, when he says the fact "that your conscience approves of and attests to such a course of action, is itself alone an obligation." If conscience speaks with the voice of authority, it is not a delusion, and we ought therefore yield to it in all our conduct an unquestioning obedience. Although this is true, however, conscience is not theoretically self-justified; the 'why' of its authority lies in that reality of which it is the perception. The reality which it perceives is not ultimately conscience's own creation. Just as in the apprehension of truth, we trust to our perceptual and reasoning processes to make a valid report of reality, so in our apprehension of morality we trust to the validity of the process of the moral consciousness. Whatever creative activity has been ascribed in modern thought either to speculative or to practical reason, we must hold that both truth and morality have a ground outside of our own thinking and consciousness. One could point out the same circle in regard to speculative reason that is said to exist in Butler's theory of conscience. Truth is that which reason discerns to be true, and reason is the faculty which determines truth. As the escape from such a 'circle' lies in our discovery of the standards and tests by which we judge truth, so the escape from the same circle involved in the doctrine of conscience lies in our discovery of the standards and tests by which we judge morality.
Conscience as reflection is, then, that which perceives what virtue is, and thereby determines itself as the guide of our actions. The proof of obligation to virtue may be shown by an appeal to conscience, in the same way "as the external senses are appealed to for the proof of things cognizable by them." "Since then our inward feelings, and the perceptions we receive from our external senses, are equally real; to argue from the former to life and conduct is as little liable to exception, as to argue from the latter to absolute speculative truth. A man can as little doubt whether his eyes were given him to see with,
