ABSTRACT
A conscience is an objectively constituted part of the psyche through which society's values are imported into the individual's mind. The conscience-based equity that is used in England and Wales grew through the centuries from a theological idea about the monarch's conscience and the need for individual defendants to cleanse their consciences through the courts. The development of the specifically English equity, building on Aristotle's theory, was signalled with the use of the idea of conscience. A conscience is not simply subjective knowledge of oneself, but rather it recognises the existence of a conscious self and an entirely different self within one's mind. In the Christian tradition, and the conscience was considered to be the voice of God inside the individual's mind. Recognising that a conscience is actually an objective phenomenon is the answer to many of the troublesome debates within equity because it refutes the suggestion that any judgment based on conscience is merely a subjective judgment.
