A surprising amount of nonsense has been talked about conscience. On the one hand remorse (or the again-bite, as certain scholars of ultra-Teutonic leanings would prefer to call it); on the other hand an easy conscience: these have been accepted as the determining factors of happiness or the reverse. Of course there is an element of truth in the easy conscience view, but it begs the whole question. A particularly hardy conscience may be quite easy under the most unfavourable conditions—conditions in which the more feeble conscience might be severely afflicted with the again-bite. d, then, it seems to be the fact that some fortunate persons have no conscience at all; a negative gift that raises them above the mental vicissitudes of the common herd of humanity.