32 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART i 



because each part was implied in all the rest. The 

 human organism, happily for us, does not illustrate 

 the metaphysical category in this phase of perfec- 

 tion. Yet the category is not irrelevant. In the 

 healing of a wound physiologists recognise some- 

 thing analogous to the mysterious power by which 

 the lobster grows a fresh claw. Thus the parable ex- 

 ists in nature, but the fulfilment is found in reason and 

 in conscience. Far more fully than any members in 

 one of nature's organisms, "we" human beings, 

 God's children " are members one of another." Our 

 mutual dependence is absolute ; our life, if torn as- 

 under from each other, is no human life at all. 



A different criticism might be stated by one believ- 

 ing lesa/confidently than idealists do in the completed 



. scale/of the sciences, while attaching more distinctive 



importance than they attach to the revelations of the 



>moral consciousness. Such a one would ask, Is this 



*-^ biological parable anything more than a covert 

 appeal to the moral consciousness ? Is it anything 

 more than a fantastic way of saying, " You ought," 

 a masked transition from the " So it is " of phenome- 

 nalism to the " So it ought to be " of ethics ? Reli- 

 gion, at least in its historical forms, has been 

 deposed ; Christianity has been scouted ; intuition has 

 been laughed down ; philosophy has been told to 

 vanish with the ghosts before the noontide of science. 

 Yes, but how are you going to bring men under 

 authority when so many authorities have been sent 

 packing ? It is very convenient if you can assert the 

 claim, the moral claim, of the community in the par- 

 able of body and members ! This may not be a 

 perfect moral authority, but it is at any rate an 



