For the sake of the abstract character of the good, the other moment of the Idea — particularity in general — falls into subjectivity, which, in its universality reflected into itself, is the absolute certainty of itself within itself, the positing of particularity, the determining and deciding element — conscience.
One can speak very sublimely of duty, and such talk elevates the human being and makes his heart expansive; but if it advances to no determination, it becomes tedious in the end: spirit demands a particularity to which it is entitled. Conscience, by contrast, is this deepest inward solitude with oneself, in which everything external and every limitation has vanished, this thoroughgoing withdrawal into oneself. As conscience, the human being is no longer bound by the ends of particularity, and this is accordingly a high standpoint, a standpoint of the modern world, which has only now arrived at this consciousness, at this sinking into itself. The earlier, more sensuous ages have before them something external and given, be it religion or right; but conscience knows itself as thinking, and knows that this thinking of mine is what alone is binding for me.
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