Each morning the Pharisees awoke and said two prayers. First: ''Thank God I am not as other men.'' Second: ''Thank God I am not a woman,'' but that need not concern us here.

The Pharisees have descended in all their fury on Philippe Rushton, the University of Western Ontario professor who believes the races differ genetically in their capacity to think, to obey the law, and to copulate.

The London Urban Alliance on Race Relations has been holding news conferences almost daily in an effort to have him dismissed. The premier of the province offered that if it were up to him, Rushton would be fired. The usually mild-mannered CBC radio science show, Quirks and Quarks, gave over its entire hour to an attack of quite appalling savagery.

It is difficult to see what real threat the Great Satan at the focus of this wrath presents. Rushton has no political agenda and seems to bear no ill will toward anyone. He poses no special danger to science, the university, his students, blacks, Asians, or others. He is without guile, and lacks the barest knowledge of the propagandist's art.

Indeed, one is startled by his naivete. Were he truly the devil he is painted, he would take on either the defensive hostility of a Lyndon Larouche or the smooth assurances of a David Duke, the Klu Klux Klan Grand Wizard just elected to the Louisiana state legislature. But no, the newspapers phone, and phone again, and instead of hanging up or insisting his views have been distorted, he obligingly spouts forth more crackpot drivel. He is a freak show, and as such might well be a figure of fun, or of puzzlement, or even compassion. But why such venom?

He is by much expert testimony a slipshod researcher and confused theorist, citing quaint and antique sources in support of well-worn racial myths. But it is hardly news to find incompetence and lunacy in a university faculty. He probably shouldn't be teaching, but that could be said for a lot of those nestled in tenure's warm embrace. I doubt the furor would be any less if his studies were sound and his arguments flawless. It is his views that anger, and the reason is this: that in Rushton, his critics see themselves. They are aghast to discover they are like other men.

Many of those taking the stage to denounce him for suggesting certain groups are inherently less intelligent or more criminal on the basis of their genetic makeup are also the loudest in their call for such special treatment as mandatory hiring quotas on behalf of those same groups. Rushton asserts that blacks' relatively lower social standing is explained by inherent, and therefore inescapable racial characteristics. The Urban Alliance on Race Relations would assert the same social phenomenon is explained by systemic, and therefore equally inescapable racial discrimination.

But both are united by their belief in determinism: that human fortunes are fixed by larger processes, beyond the individual's control. Both, moreover, rely heavily on bald statistical aggregates to support their case. Rushton measures genitalia, and finds evidence on sexual activity. Human rights activists measure statistical disparities in employment, and find evidence of discrimination.

Both, in other words, deny the role of free will in human events, and therefore the responsibility of the individual for his lot. Each, in its own way, attacks the moral autonomy of the individual, and hence his inherent worth. There is ample pedigree for this view, of course. The Greeks worshipped the Fates. Calvin preached predestination.

The two dominant ideologies of the early 20th century, Freudianism and Marxism, equally defined human beings not as distinct acts of creation, endowed each with his own will to shape his destiny, but as the product of vast impersonal forces - in Kenneth Minogue's phrase, ''alien powers'' - be they the id or class interest. Other modern-day examples can be found in popular theories of drug ''addiction'' and media ''manipulation.''

However intuitively appealing, these ideologies - or rather this ideology - cannot withstand the slightest exposure to the real world. They fail wholly to explain how some individuals are able to escape the jail fate has designed for them. Why are so many millions able to use drugs without becoming ''addicted,'' or to quit their use altogether? Why do advertising campaigns fail? If poverty causes crime, why are the poor not all criminals?

Or to tend our present garden, if blacks are ordained by genetics or systemic bias to the underclass, how are those who insist, inconveniently, on triumphing over these disadvantages to be kept out of sight?