It is for the supporters of innate distinctions to point out any concurring impetus (apart from the Prudential and Sympathetic regards) sufficiently important to cast these powerful associations into a secondary or subordinate position.
By a familiar effect of Contiguous Association, the dread of punishment clothes the forbidden act with a feeling of aversion, which in the end persists of its own accord, and without reference to the punishment.

Actions that have long been connected in the mind with pains and penalties, come to be contemplated with a _disinterested_ repugnance; they seem to give pain on their own account.

This is a parallel, from the side of pain, of the acquired attachment to money.
Now, when, by such transference, a self-subsisting sentiment of aversion has been created, the conscience seems to be detached from all external sanctions, and to possess an isolated footing in the mind.

It has passed through the stage of reference to authority, and has become a law to itself.

But no conscience ever arrives at the independent standing, without first existing in the reflected and dependent stage.
We must never omit from the composition of the Conscience the primary impulses of Self-Interest and Sympathy, which in minds strongly alive to one or other, always count for a powerful element in human conduct, although for reasons already stated, not the strictly moral element, so far as the individual is concerned.