SCIENCE AS A RULE OF LIFE 23 



rule of the Indians is one under which might is 

 right and no real individual liberty exists, all 

 personal rights being sacrificed to the supposed 

 needs and benefit of the community. 



So much from the point of view of Natural 

 Selection, but it would appear that those who 

 have given up that factor as of anything but a 

 very minor value, if even that, have also their 

 rule of life founded on their interpretation of 

 Nature. Thus Professor Bateson, the great 

 exponent of Mendel's doctrines, who has told us 

 in his Presidential Address to the British Associa- 

 tion that we must think much less highly of 

 Natural Selection than some would have us do, 

 has, as has been set forth in the previous section 

 of this essay, his opinion as to the rule of life 

 which we should follow. 



Professor Conklyn, an American enthusiast for 

 extreme eugenistic views, has also set down in 

 print his ideas as to the lines on which our lives 

 are to be run under a scientific domination, and 

 these are to be dealt with in another article. 1 

 His scheme entails a forcible visit, not, it may be 

 supposed, to the Altar, but to the Registry Office, 

 for all persons held to be fit to perpetuate the 

 race, and forcible restraint, whether by imprison- 

 ment or by sterilisation, for all others. 



The first thing which all these essays towards a 

 scientific conduct of life reveal is a total want of 

 perspective, for they proceed on the hypothesis 

 which no doubt their authors would defend that 

 this world and its concerns are everything, and 

 1 Science and the War^ p. 120. 



