conduct so that the little one takes a tart and eats it hurriedly
before mother returns and then runs into the dining room or
bedroom. Thus, instead of merely obeying an impulse to take the
tart, as an uninstructed child would, he has now become a little
thief and has had his first real moral struggle.

But it is a grim law that sensual pleasures do not last beyond
the period of gratification. If this were not so there could be
no morality in the world, and conscience would never reach any
importance. Whether we gratify sex appetite or gastric hunger,
the pleasure goes at once. True, there may be a short afterglow
of good feeling, but rarely is it strongly affective, and very
often it is replaced by a positive repulsion for the appetite. On
the other hand, to be out of conformity with your group is a
permanent pain, and the fear of being found out is an anxiety
often too great to be endured. And so our child, with the tart
gone, wishes he had not taken it, perhaps not clearly or
verbally; he is regretful, let us say. Out of this regret, out of
this fear of being found out, out of the pain of nonconformity,
arises the conscience feeling which says, "Thou shalt not" or
"Thou shalt," according to social teaching.

It may be objected that "Conscience often arrays itself against
society, against social teaching, against perhaps all men." It is
not my place to trace the growth in mind of the idea of the
Absolute Good, or absolute right and wrong, with which a man must
align himself. I believe it is the strength of the ego feeling
which gives to some the vigor and unyieldingness of their
conscience. "I am right," says such a person, "and the rest of
the world is wrong. God is with me, my conscience and future