that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the
hidden chambers of his heart? If the cause of these emotions does not
belong to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is
directed must be supernatural and divine; and thus the phenomena of
conscience as a dictate avail to impress the imagination with the picture
of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing,
retributive."[16]

Now I have quoted this passage because it seems to me to convey in a
concise form the whole of the argument from Conscience. But how tremendous
are the inferences which are drawn from the facts! As the first step in our
criticism, it is necessary to point out that two very different orders of
feelings are here treated by Dr. Newman. There is first the pure or
uncompounded ethical feelings, which spring directly from the moral sense
alone, and which all men experience in varying degrees. And next there are
what we may term the _ethico-theological_ feelings, which can only spring
from a blending of the moral sense with a belief in a personal God, or
other supernatural agents. The former class of feelings, or the
uncompounded ethical class, have exclusive reference to the moral
obligations that subsist between ourselves and other human beings, or
sentient organisms. The latter class of feelings, or the ethico-theological
class, have reference to the moral obligations that are believed to subsist
between ourselves and the Deity, or other supernatural beings. Now, in
order not to lose sight of this all-important distinction, I shall
criticise Dr. Newman's rendering of the ordinary argument from Conscience
in each of these two points of views separately. To begin, then, with the
uncompounded ethical feelings.

Such emotions as attend the operation of conscience in those who follow its
light alone without any theories as to its supernatural origin, are all of
the character of _reasonable_ or _explicable_ emotions. Granting that
fellow-feeling has been for the benefit of the race, and therefore that it
has been developed by natural causes, certainly there is nothing
_mysterious_ in the emotions that attend the violating or the following of
the dictates of conscience. For conscience is, by this naturalistic
supposition, nothing more than an organised body of certain psychological
elements, which, by long inheritance, have come to inform us, by way of
intuitive feeling, how we should act for the interests of society; so that,