SCIENCE AS A RULE OF LIFE 25 



Yet, in the face of these surely obvious facts, 

 we find persons making such absurd claims as that 

 made in a recent book by Rignano, an Italian writer 

 (Essays in Scientific Synthesis, 1917). It is not 

 often that one meets a book so full of philosophical 

 fallacies as this. "We are certain of one fact," 

 he says, " that the only organ actually brought 

 into play to fight immorality is the organ of the 

 collective conscience and not the religious organ." 

 I suppose no more ludicrously inaccurate remark 

 ever was set down in print ; for, to begin with, the 

 " collective conscience," whatever that may be, 

 does not exist in Nature, teste the farmyard and 

 the fowl-run ; and' again,' whatever force is con- 

 noted by those words must have been set agoing 

 by what ? By Nature ? Oh, most emphatically 

 No ! Nature has no law against immorality ; 

 there is no Categorical Imperative in Nature 

 commanding us to be chaste or kindly or con- 

 siderate or even just. We must go elsewhere 

 if we are to look for teaching in the virtues. 

 That is the fact that we must keep clearly before 

 our minds when endeavouring to estimate at 

 their proper value the nostrums of writers such 

 as those with whose works we have been dealing. 



