”When we take pleasure in vice, there is born in our conscience an opposite displeasure, which tortures us, sleeping and waking, with many painful thoughts.” For some this displeasure awakes without any actual vice taking place, the mere hint of vice is enough to awaken the ghosts of guilt and shame.
And then there are others who deny that anything they do is vice. To these amoral souls, anything is fine as long as you get away with it. They live without conscience or have hidden in away so deep that it has no hope of escape.
Given this wide berth, can we speak of a general conscience at all? Or is it rather the talkative, judging part of our soul, reminding us of the values we put into its creation and warning that it will have to reshape if those values aren’t honored?