For social instinct comes natural to an individual born, educated and working in a community, who shares its feelings, views and interests, nay, even its prejudices and mistakes; and if he lacks it, it is a sign of a morbid deviation from the normal. Only the decadent man is uncannily lonely in spirit, alien, indifferent or definitely hostile to his human surroundings; he is, according to the violence and polarization of his instincts, the passionate anarchist or the born criminal; the public opinion of his circle is unintelligible to him and makes no impression on him; it has no significance for him; he attaches no importance to its approbation, and its anger leaves him cold; he would take no notice of it, were it not that he knows its power to destroy him, and fears its police, its prisons, and its scaffolds. Such a man, organically predisposed to crime, most urgently needs a conscience. It would arrest him on the downward path to which his evil instincts lead. It would warn him to resist the wicked impulses of his selfishness. But he, of all people, has no conscience. He can have none. He is anti-social, he is at war with society, diplomatic relations between him and it have been broken off, and it has no representative in his consciousness. A lively and active feeling of joint responsibility with the community is a necessary predisposition on the part of the individual before conscience can have any power. Where the former is lacking the latter is mute and paralysed. The essence of Morality, as we have found, is the subjection of instinct and direct organic impulses to the discipline of Reason. The latter exercises a censorship in pursuance of a law which it derives not from within, but from without, from the ordinances of the community which instructs Reason as to what it should permit, what it should forbid, and what it should demand. Conscience ensures respect for its commands, and may be called the executive power or police of Reason, acting as the authorized representative of Morality. It is the garrison which the community maintains in the individual's consciousness, which it arms and supplies with authority and instructions; the power of conscience lies in the strength of the community at its back, and is without influence only upon those who refuse admission to the troops of the community and yield to none but actual physical force. All this proves irrefutably that Morality is a phenomenon arising from the social life of man, and its power is a function of society.