ABSTRACT
Conscience in the popular opinion is certainly one faculty of the mind, but modern psychologists are almost unanimous in their agreement that the mind works as a single unity, and so it is the mind as a whole that is engaged in making moral judgements. The feeling of remorse has always been connected with conscience. Conscience not only judges some action that we have done to be wrong, but arouses a peculiar feeling of pain that is extremely unpleasant. Indeed moralists emphasize the pains of conscience as one of the reasons for avoiding wrong actions. The Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, who is better known as one of the founders of the science of political economy, held that conscience is based on the psychological fact of sympathy. The fundamental nature of the judgement on action has been concealed by the fact that in practical life the other kinds of moral judgement are so often more important.
