SCIENCE AS INTEGEATING SOCIAL PRINCIPLE 488 



■whole spiritual life, and around wMch that spiritual life fatally 

 gravitates." ^ And so competent a scientific authority as the late 

 Professor Berthelot, in his Jubilee speech at the Paris Sorbonne, 

 declared : " La science eleve plus loin ses legitimes pretentions. 

 Elle reclame aujourd'hui a la fois la direction materielle, la 

 direction inteUectueUe, et la direction morale des societes."^ 



But are these pretensions of science legitimate ? Is science 

 in a position to replace the ancient religion as an integratiag 

 social force ? In order to answer this question, let us see what 

 the nature of this social force is, what its nature must be, if it is 

 to respond to that criterion which we have already defined. 

 Above all things, it is necessary that a force which is to hold 

 the heterogeneous elements of society together, which is to 

 dominate all the iadividuals composing a society sufficiently to 

 be ever present to the individual as an aim and object transcend- 

 ing individual life^such a force must needs have an absolute 

 sanction. Has science such a sanction ? Obviously not. That 

 science is but the name which covers the study of the relations 

 which exist between phenomena ; that its object is but to discover 

 the nature of these relations ; that the very conditions of scientific 

 research, the very conditions of our knowledge itself, permit 

 only of investigation into the nature of the relations between 

 phenomena, but do not permit of research as to the nature of 

 phenomena in themselves — these are facts which no man of 

 science can deny. Science is concerned solely with the relative ; 

 but the spiritual force essential to the integration and cohesion 

 of the social organism must have a sanction which is not merely 

 relative, but absolute. 



"If it is easy to preach morality," has said Eduard von 

 Hartmann, " it is difficult to find a basis for it." ^ Hartmann is 



1 C. Bougie, La Democratie devant la Science, p. 7. Paris, Alcan, 1904. 



2 Cj. Professor Grasset, Les Limites de la Biologie, p. 191. Paris, Alcan, 

 1906. 



3 E. von Hartmann, La Religion de VAvenir, pp. 119, 120. Paris, Alcan, 

 1903. 



31—2 



