manage, and preside" over all the parts, a violation of it may be identified with a violation of the whole, just as in a civil government the entire constitution of the state is broken when the ruling authority is infringed. Conscience, as the supreme regulative principle of the human economy, is that principle which guides man towards the realization of his total nature, and action prescribed by it is prescribed in the interest and under the authority of the whole. And in thus asserting the law of the whole over the law of any part, conscience confronts man with the law of his being and of his duty.
It may now be seen what the standard is in accordance with which conscience passes judgment. It is once more comparison with the nature and potentialities of the agent. And here, as Mr. Collins says, "Butler was prepared to meet the real difficulty which lies upon the threshold of his doctrine,—that conscience is a shifting rule, varying with the various stages of civilization—with age, with country, and even with climate,"[1] because its standard is subject to change. But although neither the standard of man's internal nature nor that of his physical nature is 'exactly settled,' yet practically "we understand one another when we speak of the shape of the human body: so likewise we do when we speak of the heart and inward principles, how far soever the standard is from being exact or precisely fixed."[2] Butler is ready to admit that there may be diversity of opinion and doubt in regard to the 'particulars' of virtue, "yet, in general, there is in reality an universally acknowledged standard of it."[3] Thus it is that the rule of right is not hard to be discerned, and Butler says with Kant, every plain honest man will determine with truth what is right or wrong.[4] Morality applies to everyday life, it must be within the capacity of the ordinary man to decide for himself what is good and what is evil.
This, however, does not at all imply that moral principles are directly and intuitively recognized, or that conscience is a faculty of infallible and immediate moral insight. These epithets are not
