e sole death,
When man's loss comes to him from his gain.'[8]

(2) But if conscience can be perverted it may also be _improved_. The
education is twofold, social and individual. Through society, says
Green, personality is actualised. 'No individual can make a conscience
for himself. He always needs a society to make it for him.'[9] There
is no such thing as a purely individual conscience. Man can only
realise himself, come to his best, in relation to others. The
conditions amid which a man is born and reared--the home, the school,
the church, the state--are the means by which the conscience is
exercised and educated. But the individual is not passive. He has
also a part to play; and the whole task of man may be regarded as an
endeavour to make his conscience effective in life. The New Testament
writers refrain from speaking of the conscience as an unerring and
perfect organ. Their language implies rather the possibility of its
gradual enlightenment; and St. Paul specially dwells upon the necessity
of 'growing in spiritual {78} knowledge and perception.' As life
advances moral judgment may be modified and corrected by fuller
knowledge, and the perception of a particular form of conduct as good
may yield to the experience of something better.

2. 'It is one of the most wonderful things,' says Professor Wundt,
'about moral development, that it unites so many conditions of
subordinate value in the accomplishment of higher results,'[10] and the
worth of morality is not endangered because the grounds of its
realisation in special cases do not always correspond in elevation to
the moral ideas. The conscience is not an independent faculty which
issues its mandates irrespective of experience. Its judgments are
always conditioned by motives. The moral imperatives of conscience may
be grouped under four heads:[11] (1) _External constraints_, including
all forms of punishment for immoral actions and the social
disadvantages which such actions involve. These can only produce the
lowest grade of morality, outward propriety, the mere appearance of
virtue which has only a negative value in so far as it avoids what is
morally offensive. (2) _Internal constraints_, consisting of
influences excited by the example of others, by public opinion and
habits formed through education and training. (3) _Self-satisfaction_,
originating in the agent's own consciousness. It may be a sense of
pleasure or feeling of self-appr