One circumstance especially which at first sight seems favorable to Kant’s contention turns against him. He has been assailed on the ground that his categorical imperative is a fiction, that no such an imperative plays a rôle in the actual experience of men. On the contrary, the actual experience of men is replete with categorical imperatives. Nothing in the life of man plays a greater rôle than these imperatives. The danger that threatens Kant’s demonstration is due to the number of rival categoricals that compete with his, and from which the one he sets up is not with certainty distinguishable. To put the matter simply, what is called in technical language a categorical imperative is nothing else than a way of acting somehow felt by the individual to be obligatory upon him, whether he likes it or dislikes it. It is a constraint in which he is bound to acquiesce, a public rule of some sort which overrides his private propensities. Constraints of this sort are numerous. Many of them no one would think of designating as moral. Some are distinctly antimoral. I will mention a few:—for instance, the rules of behavior derived from the _tabu_ notion. Certain kinds of food may not be eaten; certain objects like the Ark of the Covenant in David’s time may not be touched.[19] Strict _tabus_ obtain in regard to marriage such as the rules of endogamy and exogamy. Certain persons may not even be looked at. A feeling of horror is felt toward those who transgress these rules; and the transgression of them is often considered far more reprehensible than a moral sin. It would evidently be absurd to characterize a Hottentot or a Fiji Islander as the moral equal of a civilized man on the ground that, like the latter, he possesses the sense of duty, consisting in his case of an unquestioning acknowledgment of the categorical imperative of _tabus_. Gang loyalty is another instance in point. In one of our prisons a certain convict is at present paying the penalty of a crime which was really committed by one of his pals. He could have got off scot free if he had “squealed.” But “squealing” is contrary to the honor code of the gang and he preferred to sacrifice his liberty rather than prove recreant to the claims of gang loyalty. There are some writers who hold that this is an instance of morality, genuine as far as it goes, but restricted within too narrow a circle. The fact that it is restricted within too narrow a circle, that fidelity to a few is compatible with violent hostility against the community at large, seems to me to prove that the moral quality is absent. Morality is either universal or nothing. Gang loyalty is a social phenomenon, but not an ethical phenomenon. The distinction between the two terms will be enforced later on. In any event the sense of constraint is manifest. The moral character of the constraint I deny.