Man has been called a moral animal. Is this not a strange description in the age of Auschwitz and Hiroshima? Would it not be more accurate to call man an evil animal? But it seems clear that we may call ourselves evil only if we have within us moral forces. A rattlesnake would never think of calling itself evil; it does not have the moral dimension. We are moral creatures, not because we are so good, but because we have the capacity to examine questions of "should" and "ought" and "the good." I wish to focus on one aspect of our moral nature: our conscience. This term has been used broadly to include any activity that bears on ethics, from giving food to a child to nailing 95 theses on a church door or debating the merits and demerits of abortion. I shall consider conscience in a more restricted sense, i.e., in the sense of our "moral intuition," which makes us feel guilty and ashamed when we have apparently done something wrong. Conversely, our moral intuition may tell us we are right and send us feelings of honor, wholesomeness, and belonging. What does our conscience say to us when we arrive late to work, when we cheat on our income tax, or when we avoid a person who is lonely? What does our conscience say to us when we are confronted with the realities of famine, pestilence, and sword? Are we moved to action? Or do we become apathetic? Is the voice of conscience effective and reliable? Should we listen to its judgments? For many years, there has been a controversy about the reliability of the inner voice that guides and criticizes the things we do. The controversy is heard mainly in philosophical, theological, and psychiatric circles. One school of thought says that the conscience or superego is an extremely reliable voice from within. When we feel guilty or depressed, it means that our conscience is justly punishing us for having done something wrong. If we do not feel guilty or depressed, it means that we can feel safe, our path is straight. The other school of thought does not consider the voice of conscience a reliable guide. It maintains that we may feel