Yet, in the face of these surely obvious facts, we find persons making such absurd claims as that made in a recent book by Rignano, an Italian writer (_Essays in Scientific Synthesis_, 1917). It is not often that one meets a book so full of philosophical fallacies as this. "We are certain of one fact," he says, "that the only organ actually brought into play to fight immorality is the organ of the collective conscience and not the religious organ." I suppose no more ludicrously inaccurate remark ever was set down in print; for, to begin with, the "collective conscience," whatever that may be, does not exist in Nature, _teste_ the farmyard and the fowl-run; and again, whatever force is connoted by those words must have been set agoing--by what? By Nature? Oh, most emphatically No! Nature has no law against immorality; there is no Categorical Imperative in Nature commanding us to be chaste or kindly or considerate or even just. We must go elsewhere if we are to look for teaching in the virtues. That is the fact that we must keep clearly before our minds when endeavouring to estimate at their proper value the nostrums of writers such as those with whose works we have been dealing. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Two addresses were delivered in 1914--one in Melbourne, the other in Sydney. These will be referred to in this article as M. & S.] [Footnote 2: Sir Oliver Lodge: _Continuity_, p. 90.] [Footnote 3: _Materials for the Study of Variation_, London, 1894.] [Footnote 4: _The History and Theory of Vitalism_, p. 140.] [Footnote 5: _Unconscious Memory._ Fifield. 1910.] [Footnote 6: Those who desire further information may be referred to _A Century of Scientific Thought_, by the present writer. Burns & Oates.] [Footnote 7: _Op. cit._, pp. 137-8.] [Footnote 8: _The Philosophy of Biology_, p. 64.] [Footnote 9: In an article in the volume _Darwin and Modern Science_, p. 100.] [Footnote 10: _Op. cit._, p. 319.] [Footnote 11: _Op. cit._, pp. 238-9.] [Footnote 12: See the discussion on this subject in Wasmann's _The Problem of Evolution_.] [Footnote 13: R. R. Marett, Presidential Address to Folk-Lore Society, 1915. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xxvii., pp. 1-14.] [Footnote 14: _The Kingdom of Man._ London: Constable & Co. 1907.] [Footnote 15: Lankester, _op. cit._, p. 26.] [Footnote 16: _Op. cit._, pp. 21-27.] [Footnote 17: _My Life with the Eskimo_ (1913), p. 188.] [Footnote 18: For a discussion of this question, see _Bernhardi and Creation_, by Sir James Crichton-Browne, F.R.S. Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons. 1916.] [Footnote 19: _The Northwest Amazons._ London: Constable & Co. 1915.] [Footnote 20: _Science and the War_, p. 120.] II. THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS Sec. 1. THEOPHOBIA: ITS CAUSE