XXvi HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



in Part III., Chapter IV. And such must inevitably be the case 

 if we reflect that the moral law consists in a svbordination of 

 the individual to an exterior fower. There is no such thing as 

 " natural religion " or " natural ethics," if we understand by 

 these terms a religion or an ethical code derived from " Nature." 

 Nature is not a moral entity ; there is no morality in Nature. 

 And if we profess to derive an ethical law from Nature, we are 

 deriving this law, not from Nature as she is, but from Nature 

 as we see her — and this is an entirely different thing. When we 

 set about to discover a foundation for the moral law which is 

 to be purely rationalistic, and when we think to discover this 

 foundation in Nature herself, we are crediting Nature with 

 qualities she does not possess, we are reading into the book of 

 Nature metaphysical conceptions of our own, whether we will 

 it or not. As soon as appeal is made to a moral law, appeal is 

 made to something surpassing the individual, to something the 

 vaUdity of which we assume quod semper, quod ubique, quod 

 omnibus. Consequently, this " something " cannot be contained 

 in the individual reason, the validity of which is purely per- 

 sonal ; it must of necessity transcend individual reason ; or, in 

 other words, it must be supra-rational. Rational moralists, once 

 they attempt to discover the categorical imperative, appeal to 

 the supra-rational. 



We have made no attempt in the following pages to approach 

 the subject from the standpoint of an apologist of the dogmas 

 of Christianity. With the dogmatic and mystical principles of 

 any rehgion the sociologist has no concern whatever. Just as 

 little could it be inferred that the present book is a vindication 

 of the religious principles of the CathoHc Church. With such 

 principles the sociologist has nothing to do ; they lie outside his 

 domain. Anticlericalism is a necessary and permanent condi- 

 tion of existence for the civil power in every country, provided 

 we imderstand by this term the perpetual and indispensable 

 separation between the ecclesiastical and the civil spheres of 



