I may in my conduct follow and abide by rules which I have never made explicit...

I may in my conduct follow and abide by rules which I have never made explicit; breaches of such rules may shame or shock me without my articulating any formula adequately expressive of the rule. But such unreflective behavior is as much rule governed as is the behavior of the man who consciously invokes an expressly formulated maxim.

And it is clearly the kind of behavior which Burke wants to exalt; we use words like habit and prejudice to bring out not that such conduct is not governed by rules, but that our attitude to the rules is unreflecrive. Burke is right to suppose that the moral life would be destroyed by our reflecting upon our rules of conduct prior to each and…