The question of the meaning of life is answered in one’s conduct towards others. It is a platitude that science addresses the how, and religion the why. But there is no why. How one answers the question is manifested in one’s actions, so that the performance of deeds, how things are done, is the answer, landing us right back in the question of technique, how we are to behave, if we want to get results. Science applied is applied in terms of an input and output mentality.

A platitude, too, it is that science cannot give us a code of conduct. It can produce outcomes, but cannot tell us what to do with the knowledge of how to do so. The sciences can tell us that settled law is a composite document, rather than given from on high. But it cannot tell us why we should obey the law, if it is good. And how do we know if it is good?

It has been objected that morality cannot be reduced to a matter of taste, but of course it can. It is feared, perhaps, that, if it is so reduced, then there is no reason why one should not do wrong. It happens that anyone with his eyes opened will have noticed that, however many reasons can be given, human beings seem steadily to continue to do wrong to one another. The fantasy of an ultimate reason, an authoritative answer, irrefutable, to the question of why we should avoid doing wrong will keep philosophers and theologians running on a wild goose chase with no end, any more than our wanderings through history, our own lives and the void, have an end. Science would tell us that our end surely will be our obliteration as a race.

Yet this does not answer the question of what we should do here, now. Dostoevsky is said to have bewailed that, if there is no God, then everything is permitted. Yes, including doing right! Do we not confess that religion is originated of human beings? If we have created such novel forms of discourse, related by ourselves to ourselves – (and for what reason, we may ask) – then surely we are capable of acting on what we tell ourselves should be good. It is beautiful and becoming to act well, to do justice, to be kind, and what is more so the case, presented in this way, the one in question will find that no one disputes him. Why, then, should religion not rest on the ground of aesthetics? Boorish conduct is in poor taste – upon this, there is universal agreement, and when one behaves in such a way as to condone it, there is no appeal to outside authority, residing in the heavens above (there is no seat there to support Him), except insofar as we are liable to say, when presented with the facts, that yes, after all, it is true, and we do wrong to overlook it.

There are policemen to enforce codes of conduct, but what happens when the policemen behave badly? When this misbehavior is sufficiently widespread, the state is corrupt, and people, feeling oppressed, will endeavor to establish one better. They might fail; they might succeed. There is nothing that says that we must live under a good world order. But when the scale is tipped from a bad government to a good, note that it is because, in the context of a mass demonstration, the police abdicate their duty, and join the marchers, preferring this, their humanity, to a duty that has become inhumane because corrupted by ill governance. It is all a function of preference.