But, if the man has a conscience,—and he could not lose his self-respect without one,—it could not trouble him so long as he was convinced that he had done the best for himself. By bringing the conscience at all into the discussion, the scientists fall back on an emotion which has been always intimately associated with the sense of personal responsibility, and which they themselves have been compelled, in order to protect their theories, to deny absolutely as an instinct or to represent as the result of religious education. For this reason, Nordau would not call that instinct in man which prompts him to live and act morally—an instinct which is the original motor of all moral progress—conscience. He would probably prefer to call it the social instinct. But names matter little. The essential point is, that there exists in man’s consciousness a strong instinct which cannot be reasoned away. This instinct is intimately connected with another, without which it would never have produced the results we see around us—namely, the instinct that the _Ego_ is imperishable. No one would deny the universal existence of this instinct, but plenty of scientists, while acknowledging it as an inherited tendency, would deny it any value as an argument in favour of the immortality of the _Ego_, on the ground that a hazy, unreasoned, and utterly inexplicable yearning need not have a distinct goal. The instinct of human beings is a subject which has been very much neglected by science, and for the good reason that, whatever instincts may be natural to man, they have been carefully smothered by teachings, examples, and experience, all appealing to his reason from infancy upwards. He never uses, never tries, and never suspects the existence of his instincts, and when accidentally they lead him right, he regards the fact as a delusion, and even avoids mentioning it from a fear of being laughed at. This has however not prevented men, and often remarkable men, from being guided by their instincts; only it is called feeling, taste, luck. There are examples of men who owe the greater part of their success to instinctive feeling, and who have committed great mistakes by having trusted too much to it. Besides it is generally believed that women’s instincts are clear and trustworthy, and many men consider themselves to have been largely benefited by consulting them.