 What is the ontological status of conscience? According to Bonaventure, just as theologians have disagreed over the nature of “thought”, defining it variously as the power of thinking, a habit or an apprehended principle of knowledge, so too have they differed over how to define “conscience” (conscientia). Most commonly, however, the term has been used to refer to a cognitive habit or disposition that relates to the practical as opposed to the theoretical intellect. Indeed, it is the disposition that perfects the practical intellect. How so? Through its consciousness of the principles that comprise the natural law—such as that “God is to be honoured”—and through the issuing of such injunctions to the will. As Bonaventure puts it: