from within outward. It holds, like Christianity, that its prime concern is to touch the heart and quicken the conscience and give a right direction to the will. If the heart be right, say the exponents of this morality, right conduct will follow. One does not look to the world for approval; one endeavours to satisfy the inner monitor. One's own standards of right and wrong are more severe than anything that can be imposed from outside. Therefore one takes for a motto: "Trust thyself. To thine own self be true; thou canst not then be false to any man." If you get morality effectively planted at the centre of a man, he does right though no one is looking. He does right though the heavens fall.
The high tendency of this personal morality is to produce a man like Emerson, notable for independence, depth, poise, and serenity. Its low tendency is to produce a sentimentalist like Rousseau, whose "beautiful soul" is dissociated from his mundane and muddy behaviour.
At another period, we have a morality of which the centre is outside the individual. It is felt as a social pressure, working from without inward. It is primarily concerned, like ancient Judaism and like all systems of etiquette,