Herbert Spencer
In treating of Mr. Spencer’s work, it is necessary to begin with a book which made its appearance before the publication of “The Origin of Species,” namely, “Social Statics” (1851), Mr. Spencer’s first noteworthy publication. In this are contained some remarkable statements, which are of especial worth as showing in what measure the thought of the time was already tending in the direction of the revelations of its greatest prophet, and science, in England as in Germany, was slowly coming to recognize the unity of nature in life and human progress. An analysis of the first and theoretical part of this work will be, therefore, of use, and with this we will begin.
Mr. Spencer opens his book with some criticisms of Utilitarianism or the “Expediency Philosophy.” Every rule, in order to be of value, must have a definite meaning. The rule of “the greatest happiness to the greatest number” supposes mankind to be unanimous in the definition of the greatest happiness; the standard of happiness is, however, infinitely variable, in nations and in individuals. For happiness signifies a gratified state of all the faculties; and no two individuals are alike in faculties. In endeavoring to fix a standard, we are met by such insolvable problems as: What is the ratio between mental and bodily enjoyments constituting the greatest happiness? Which is most truly an element in the desired felicity, content or aspiration? The conclusion we inevitably reach is that a true conception of what human life should be is possible only to the ideal man,—in whom the component feelings exist in their normal proportions. The world as yet contains no such men, and we are left with an insolvable riddle on our hands.
There is the same uncertainty as to the mode of obtaining the greatest happiness.
The Expediency Philosophy believes that man’s intellect is competent to observe accurately and to grasp at once the multiplied phenomena of life and derive therefrom the knowledge which shall enable him to say whether such or such measures will conduce to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
If without knowledge of terrestrial phenomena and their laws, Newton had attempted a theory of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have cogitated to all eternity without result. Such an attempt, however, would have been far less absurd than the attempt to find out the principles of public polity by a direct examination of that wonderfully intricate combination, Society. In order to understand Society it is necessary to comprehend Man.
Another mistake of the Expediency Philosophy is that it assumes the eternity of government, which marks a certain stage of civilization, but which will by no means necessarily last forever. Time was when the history of a people was the history of its government. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery,—all were forms of government. Progress means less government; constitutional forms, political freedom, democracy, all mean this. Government is a sign of imperfection, an evil necessary against knavery; it must exist only so long as this exists. The Expediency Philosophy is, however, founded on government; takes it into partnership: but a system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of correct rules for the best, as well as the worst, members of society, and applicable to humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Of the Expediency Philosophy it must, therefore, be said that it can claim no scientific character, since:
Its fundamental proposition is not an axiom but a problem to be solved;
It is expressed in terms possessing no fixed acceptation;
It would require omniscience to carry it into practice;
And, moreover, it takes imperfection for its basis.
The existence of society argues a certain fitness and desire of mankind for it; without this, it would not exist, as eating and drinking, and the nourishment and protection of offspring would not take place if there were no corresponding desires, but merely an abstract opinion in favor of the worth of the two. In the method of nature, there is always some prompter, called a desire, answering to each of the actions which it is requisite for us to perform. It is probable, therefore, that we shall find an instrumentality of this sort prompting us to morality. In objection to the theory of a moral sense, the want of uniformity in judgment as to what is right is often advanced. But none deny the importance of appetite, though all know that it is by no means an infallible guide in the choice of kind or quantity of food. The same may be said of parental affection. The foundation of the claim of any man that he has as great a right to happiness as any other can be found in the last analysis in feeling only; he feels that it is so.
None but those committed to a preconceived theory can fail to recognize the workings of such a faculty as the moral sense. It is clear that the perceptions of propriety or impropriety of conduct do not originate with the intellect but with the emotional faculties. The intellect, uninfluenced by desire, would show both miser and spendthrift that their habits were unwise; whereas the intellect, influenced by desire, makes each think the other a fool, but does not enable him to see his own foolishness.
This is a universal law: Every feeling is accompanied by a sense of the rightness of those actions which give it gratification. From an impulse to behave in a way we call equitable arises a perception that it is proper, and a conviction that it is good. There is, however, a perpetual conflict amongst feelings, from which results an incongruity of beliefs.
It has been said that codes derived from the moral sense have no stability since this sense ratifies one principle at one time and place, another at another. The same objection applies, however, to every other system of morals, and happily there is an answer to the objection. The error criticised is one of application, not of doctrine. The decisions of the Geometric Sense are conflicting; yet there are certain axioms upon which all agree; and in the same manner there are moral axioms to be found, upon which all must agree. Disagreement is to be looked for among imperfect characters. But nature’s laws know no exception: Obey or suffer are the alternatives. A progress from entire unconsciousness of these laws to the conviction that law is universal and inevitable, constancy an essential attribute of divine rule, is the substance of the progress of man. The end of these unbending utterances is universal good; we have no alternative but to assume the law of constancy to be the best possible one. As with the physical, so with the ethical; all religions teach the inevitableness of punishment and reward, with which deeds are necessarily and indissolubly connected. It is of infinite importance to recognize and follow the laws of society. To the objection that one cannot always be guided by abstract principles, that there are exceptions where prudence must act, it may be replied that there are no exceptions to the laws of nature; that even if, in a particular instance, partial good may result, a far greater general evil is entailed by the opening of the way to future disobediences, and that we cannot, moreover, be sure that an exceptional disobedience will bring the anticipated benefits. Moral as well as physical evil is the result of a want of congruity between the faculties and their sphere of action. With regard to the results of varying conditions upon man, we have three alternative theories from which to choose: either man remains entirely unaltered by his surroundings, or he grows more unfitted for them, or else he grows more fitted for them. The first two suppositions being absurd, we are obliged to admit the remaining one. And since all evil results from non-adaptation, and non-adaptation is being continually diminished, it follows that evil must be continually diminishing. The evil in society shows that man is not yet completely adapted to a state which requires that each individual shall have such desires only as may be fully satisfied without trenching upon the ability of other individuals to obtain a like satisfaction. The primitive condition of man required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his own; the old attribute still clings to him in some measure; the belief in human perfectibility amounts to the belief that man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress is not an accident but a necessity; and if, instead of proposing it as a rule of human conduct, Bentham had simply assumed the “greatest happiness” to be the creative purpose, his position would have been tenable enough. It is one thing, however, to hold that greatest happiness is the creative purpose, and quite a different thing to hold that greatest happiness should be the immediate aim of mankind. Truth has two sides, a divine and a human; or, it is for man to ascertain the conditions which lead to the greatest happiness, and to live in conformity with these.
The men who are to realize this greatest sum of happiness must be such as can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the activity and happiness of others. The first great condition of the attainment of the end is, therefore, justice, and, as a supplement to this, negative and positive beneficence,—abstinence from diminishing the spheres of activity of others, and further, a positive increase of their pleasure. For man is sympathetic, and the sympathetic pleasures increase the sum total of happiness.
The exercise38 of all the faculties in which happiness consists is not only man’s right but also his duty. For the fact of pain, of punishment, proves that God intends and wills such exercise. But the exercise of all the faculties is freedom; all men have, therefore, a right to freedom of action. This principle, however, implies a limitation of man by men, whereby we arrive at the general proposition that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his feelings compatible with the possession of a like liberty in every other man. In the progress of mankind, or adaptation, the conduct which hurts necessary feelings in others must inevitably undergo restraint and consequent limitation; conduct which hurts only their incidental feelings, as those of caste or prejudice, will not inevitably be restrained, but if it springs from necessary feelings, will, on the contrary, be continued at the expense of these incidental feelings and to their final suppression. Morality is not, therefore, to be interpreted as a refraining from the infliction of any pain whatever, for some sentiment must be wounded; and by much wounding it is gradually weakened. When men mutually behave in a way that offends some essential element in the nature of each, and all in turn have to bear the consequent suffering, there will arise a tendency to curb the desire that makes them so behave.
Questions of individual morality seem to present a difficulty to this theory of freedom. Thus, for instance, on the principle above adopted, the liberty of drunkenness cannot be condemned as long as the drunkard respects a like liberty in others; and here we fall into the inconsistency of affirming that a man is at liberty to do something essentially destructive of happiness. However, if we admit, as we must, that liberty is the primary law, no desire to get a secondary law fulfilled can warrant us in breaking this primary one; we must deal with secondary laws as best we can.
The first principle above stated may also be secondarily derived. The regulation of conduct is not left to the accident of a philosophical inquiry; the agent of morality is the Moral Sense.
In all ages, but more especially in recent ones, have there been affirmations of the equality of all men and their equal right to happiness. When we find that a belief like this is not only permanent but daily gaining ground, we have good reason to conclude that it corresponds to some essential element of our moral constitution; more especially since we find that its existence is in harmony with that chief prerequisite to greatest happiness lately dwelt upon; and that its growth is in harmony with the law of adaptation, by which the greatest happiness is being wrought out.
To assert, however, that the sense of justice is but the gradually acquired conviction that benefits spring from some kinds of action, and evils from other kinds, the sympathies and antipathies contracted manifesting themselves as a love of justice and a hatred of injustice, is as absurd as to conclude that hunger springs from a conviction of the benefit of eating.
The Moral Sense must be regarded as a special faculty, since, otherwise, there would be nothing during the dormancy of the other faculties, which must sometimes occur, to prevent an infringement on the freedom requisite for their future action.
As Adam Smith has shown in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” the proper regulation of our conduct to others is secured by means of a faculty whose function it is to excite in each being the emotions displayed by the beings about him. The sentiment of justice is nothing but a sympathetic affection of the instinct of personal rights, a sort of reflex function of it. Other things being equal, those persons possessing the strongest sense of personal rights have, also, the strongest sense of the rights of others. There is no necessary connection between the two; but in the average of cases they bear a constant ratio.
It may be objected that if the truth that every man has a freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringe not upon the equal freedom of others, be an axiom, it should be recognized by all, as is not the case. This difficulty seems in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect law recognize an imperfect state. It may further be answered that the Bushman knows nothing of the science of mathematics, yet that arithmetic is a fact; the difference in men’s moral perceptions is no difficulty in our way, but rather illustrates the truth of our theory, since man is not yet adapted to the social state.
In further confirmation of the doctrine of the free exercise of function, it may be added that, since non-fulfilment of desire produces misery, if God is to be regarded as willing such non-fulfilment, he must be regarded as willing men’s misery; which is absurd. If men are not naturally free, then a doctrine of the divine right of kings is easily reached, and whoever is king must be regarded as such by divine right, no matter how he reached the throne.
Spencer then proceeds to apply his first principle or axiom of freedom to prove the right to life and liberty, to the use of the earth, to property and free speech; and considers further the rights of women and of children, and the political rights of individuals; the constitution and duty of the state; commerce, education, and the poor-laws; government colonization, sanitary supervision, postal arrangements, etc. A remarkable feature of this part of “Social Statics” is that Spencer, while applying his principle with quite an opposite result to all other property, advocates the nationalization of the land, on the ground that the freedom of the individual is right only in so far as it does not hinder a like freedom in others; and that the monopolization of the privileges of land-ownership by individuals does prevent the enjoyment of the same privilege by others.
General Considerations
The course of civilization could not possibly have been other than it has been.
Progress shows us that perfect individuation joined to the greatest mutual dependence will be reached in the future of the race. There will be an ultimate identity of personal and social interests, and a disappearance of evil. Spencer gives, however, a number of arguments to prove that the interest of society is, at present also, the interest of the individual.
The “Theory of Population” (published in 1852), which is founded on the theory of an antagonism between the intellectual and the reproductive powers, and on the ancient theory of a direct relation between skull-capacity or brain-size and intellectual power, contains this passage: “From the beginning, pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth’s surface. It forced men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily pressing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due peopling of the globe, and the bringing of all its habitable parts into the highest state of culture,—after having brought all processes for the satisfaction of human wants to the greatest perfection,—after having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for social life,—after having done all this, we see the pressure of population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself to an end.”
In a letter to Mr. Mill, published in Bain’s “Mental and Moral Science” (p. 721, 3d edition), Spencer repudiates the title of Anti-Utilitarian, which Mr. Mill, in view of the criticisms of Utilitarianism contained in “Social Statics,” had applied to him. He defines his position in respect to Utilitarianism as follows: “I have never regarded myself as an Anti-Utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly understood, concerns, not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency Philosophy, having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.
“But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so-called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things, and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.
“Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early stages, planetary astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and planets; from which accumulated observations it came by and by to be empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the modern science of planetary astronomy consists of deductions from the law of gravitation—deductions showing why the celestial bodies necessarily occupy certain places at certain times. Now the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient and modern astronomy is analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the Expediency Morality and Moral Science properly so-called. And the objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of morality—does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of Moral Science.
“To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from the organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals, who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous organizations—just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition, certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that, just as the space-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them, so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science; and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them.”
In “Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals”39 (1871), Spencer, after quoting portions of the above letter as defining his position, continues with a consideration of the continual readjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable, the former of which prescribes a system far too good for men as they are, the latter of which does not of itself tend to establish a system better than the existing one; and he reiterates his law of the perfect man as follows:—
“Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is relatively right, it still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other.” Spencer further expressly repudiates empirical Utilitarianism, and denies the assertion of Mr. Hutton that he by implication recognizes no parentage for morals beyond that of the accumulation and organization of the facts of experience. On this head he says:—
“In the genesis of an idea, the successive experiences, be they of sounds, colors, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects that combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion, the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures, though they have a certain community of general nature. Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of pleasure or pain that were associated with them. We have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why they have grown up, though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected experiences. The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized connections between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often recurred together, though the relation between them has not been consciously generalized”—associations which though little perceived, nevertheless serve as incentives or deterrents. Much deeper down than the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connections. The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological accompaniments of destructive action.
“What we call the natural language of anger is due to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling; this, too, has a physical interpretation.”
Of the altruistic sentiments, Spencer says: “The development of these has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy, and sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which conferred direct and indirect benefits; the pains inflicted being mainly incidental and indirect.” Sympathy is “the concomitant of gregariousness; the two having all along increased by reciprocal aid.”
“If we suppose all thought of rewards or punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine of utility, but by the painful associations established in him. And it is clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts, repetitions of kind deeds and experiences of the sympathetic gratifications that follow tend continually to make stronger the association between deeds and feelings of happiness.”
Spencer continues: “Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there may result a deliberate pursuit of the sympathetic gratifications. There may also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter results are respectively detrimental and beneficial—that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster; and then there may become current such summations of experience as ‘honesty is the best policy.’ But so far from regarding these intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions of utility and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly resulting, in experience, from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that they are socially beneficial and detrimental. When, however, the remote effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and check unsympathetic ones, are immensely strengthened by their alliances. Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of a creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social conduct, mutually enforce them; and every child, as it grows up, daily has impressed on it, by the words and faces and voices of those around, the authority of these highest principles.”
The altruistic sentiments develop, and altruistic action becomes habitual, “until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled unchallenged.”
And Spencer sums up his objections to the interpretation of his theory of the development of the moral sentiment as follows: “What I have said will make it clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been construed in senses much too narrow.
“Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses and means and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of means and ends—implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to include the connections found in consciousness between states that occur together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the ‘Principles of Psychology.’”
In his essay on Prison Ethics (1860), Spencer says: “The antagonistic schools of morals, like many other antagonistic schools, are both right and both wrong. The a priori school has its truth; the a posteriori school has its truth; and for the proper guidance of conduct there should be due recognition of both. On the one hand, it is asserted that there is an absolute standard of rectitude; and respecting certain classes of actions, it is rightly asserted. From the fundamental laws of life and the conditions of social existence are deducible certain imperative limitations to individual action—limitations which are essential to a perfect life, individual and social; or, in other words, essential to the greatest possible happiness. And these limitations, following inevitably as they do from undeniable first principles, deep as the nature of life itself, constitute what we may distinguish as absolute morality.
“On the other hand, it is contended, and in a sense rightly contended, that with men as they are, and society as it is, the dictates of absolute morality are impracticable. Legal control, which involves the infliction of pain, alike on those who are restrained and on those who pay the cost of restraining them, is proved by this fact to be not absolutely moral, seeing that absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. Wherefore, if it be admitted that legal control is at present indispensable, it must be admitted that these a priori rules cannot be immediately carried out. And hence it follows that we must adapt our laws and actions to the existing character of mankind—that we must estimate the good or evil resulting from this or that arrangement, and so reach a posteriori a code fitted for the time being. In short, we must fall back on expediency.” Spencer then goes on to argue that an advanced penal code is as impossible to an early stage of civilization as is an advanced form of government; a bloody penal code is both a natural product of the time and a needful restraint for the time, and is also the only one which could be carried out by the existing administration.
The aim of morality is life, of absolute morality complete life; society is therefore justified in coercing the criminal who breaks through the conditions of life or constrains us to do so. Coercion is legitimate to the extent of compelling restitution, and preventing a repetition of aggressions; no further. Less bloody systems of punishment, wherever introduced, have borne excellent fruit. It may be deductively shown that the best of all systems must be that best calculated to reform the criminal; too severe punishment, instead of awakening a sense of guilt, prevents the same, begetting a sense of injustice towards the inflicting power, which causes resentment; so that, even if the criminal, on reëntering society, commits no further crime, he is restrained by the lowest of motives—fear. The industrial system applied in prisons must have the best results—counteracting habits of idleness, strengthening self-control, and educating the will.
The principle of freedom, which runs through all Spencer’s works, is especially enounced again, in his essay, “The Man versus the State” (1884), in which he combats “the great political superstition” of so-called “paternal government.” He says: “Reduced to its lowest terms, every proposal to interfere with citizens’ activities further than by enforcing their mutual limitations, is a proposal to improve life by breaking through the fundamental conditions of life.”40
In “The Data of Ethics” (published 1874), Mr. Spencer assumes a somewhat different standpoint from that of his earlier works bearing on morals. The course of reasoning contained in this book is as follows:—
The doctrine that correlatives imply one another has, for one of its common examples, the relation between the conceptions of whole and part. Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative whole. Still less, when part and whole are dynamically related, and least of all when the whole is organic, can the part be understood except by comprehension of the whole to which it belongs. This truth holds not only of material but also of immaterial aggregates.
Conduct is a whole and, in a sense, an organic whole, and Ethics, of which it is a part, cannot be understood except through the understanding of the whole of conduct.
A definition of conduct must exclude purposeless actions,—such, for instance, as those of an epileptic in a fit. Hence the definition emerges either: acts adjusted to ends; or, the adjustment of acts to ends; according as we contemplate the formed body of acts, or think of the form alone. And conduct, in its full acceptation, must be taken as comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends, from the simplest to the most complex, whatever their special natures and whether they are considered separately or in their totality.
A large part of conduct is non-ethical, indifferent; this passes, by small degrees and in countless ways, into conduct which is either moral or immoral.
The acts of all living creatures, as acts adjusted to ends, come within the definition of conduct; the conduct of the higher animals as compared with that of man, and of the lower animals as compared with the higher, differs mainly in that the adjustments of acts to ends is relatively simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed; human conduct as a part of the whole of the conduct of animate beings. And further: as, in order to understand the part of human conduct with which Ethics is concerned, we must study it as a part of human conduct as a whole, and in order to understand human conduct, we must again study it as a part of the whole of conduct exhibited in animate beings, so, in order to comprehend this too, we must regard it as an outcome of former, less developed conduct, out of which it has arisen. Our first step must be to study the evolution of conduct.
Morphology deals with physical structure, physiology with the processes carried on in the body. But we enter on the subject of conduct when we begin to study such combinations among the actions of sensory and motor-organs as are externally manifested.
We saw that conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by the exclusion of purposeless actions; but during evolution this distinction arises by degrees. We trace up conduct to the vertebrates and through the vertebrates to man, and find that here the adjustments of acts to ends are both more numerous and better than among lower mammals; and we find the same thing on comparing the doings of higher races of men with those of lower. These better adjustments favor, not only prolongation, but also increased amount of life.
And among these adjustments of acts to ends, there are not only such as further individual life but also, evolving with these, such as favor the life of the species. Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct. The multitudinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth are engaged in a continuous struggle for existence, in which the adjustments of acts to ends, being imperfectly evolved, miss completeness because they cannot be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented from making them. This imperfectly evolved conduct introduces us, by antithesis, to conduct which is perfectly evolved,—such adjustments that each creature may make them without preventing other creatures making them also. The conditions of such conduct cannot exist in predatory savage life; nor can it exist where there remains antagonism between individuals forming a group, or between groups of individuals,—two traits of life necessarily associated, since the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one another also. Hence the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies; can be approached only as war decreases and dies out.
The principle of beneficence is not derived by Spencer from the principle of freedom, in “Social Statics”; and here, as in the latter book, Spencer has difficulty with it. He says: “A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if either indirectly by industrial coöperation, or directly by volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution; since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by each increases the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete.”
Thus, then, says Spencer, “we have been led to see that Ethics has for its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution.”
By comparing the meanings of a word in different connections, and observing what they have in common, we learn its essential significance. Material objects we are accustomed to designate as good or bad according as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good knife is one which will cut; the good gun is one which will carry far and true; and so on. So of inanimate actions, and so, also, of living things and actions. A good jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored, well achieves the immediate purpose of a jump; and a stroke at billiards is called good when the movements are skilfully adjusted to the requirements. So too our use of the words good and bad with respect to conduct under its ethical aspects has regard to the efficiency or non-efficiency of the adjustments of acts to ends. This last truth is, through the entanglements of social relations, by which men’s actions often simultaneously affect the welfares of self, of offspring, and of fellow-citizens, somewhat disguised. Nevertheless, when we disentangle the three orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear that the conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as relatively good; and conduct which fails to achieve it is regarded as relatively bad. The goodness ascribed to a man of business, as such, is measured by the activity and ability with which he buys and sells to advantage, and may coexist with a hard treatment of dependents which is reprobated. The ethical judgments we pass on such self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong, do need moral enforcement. With regard to the second class of adjustments of acts to ends, which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or inefficient. And most emphatic are the application of the words, in this sense, throughout the third division of conduct comprising the deeds by which men affect one another. Always, then, acts are good or bad, according as they are well or ill-adapted to ends. That is, good is the name we apply to the relatively more evolved conduct; and bad is the name we apply to that which is relatively less evolved; for we have seen that “evolution, tending ever towards self-preservation, reaches its limits when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth; and we now see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the conduct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending to self-destruction.” With increasing power of maintaining individual life goes increasing power of perpetuating the species by fostering progeny; and the establishment of an associated state both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in others; and this is the form of conduct most emphatically termed good. “Moreover, just as we saw that evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as best, when it fulfils all three classes of ends at the same time.”
Has this evolution been a mistake? The pessimist claims so, the optimist claims not. But there is one postulate in which both pessimists and optimists agree—namely, that it is evident that life is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, have a surplus of agreeable feeling; if a future life is included in the theory of either, the assumption is still the same, that life is a blessing or a curse according as existence, now considered in both worlds, contains more of pleasure or of pain; and the implication is therefore that conduct which conduces to the preservation of self, the family, and society, is good or bad in the same measure. “Thus there is no escape from the admission that conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or painful.” So that if self-mutilation furthered life, and picking a man’s pocket brightened his prospects, we should regard these acts as good. Approach to such a constitution as effects complete adjustment of acts to ends of every kind is, however, an approach to perfection, and therefore means approach to that which secures greater happiness. “Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception” of moral aim.
Here follow criticisms of the religious school of morals, which bases its system on the will of God, and of the school of “pure intuitionists,” who hold “that men have been divinely endowed with moral faculties.” “It must be either admitted or denied that the acts called good and the acts called bad naturally conduce, the one to human well-being and the other to human ill-being. Is it admitted? Then the admission amounts to an assertion that the conduciveness is shown by experience; and this involves abandonment of the doctrine that there is no origin for morals apart from divine injunctions. Is it denied that acts classed as good and bad differ in their effects? Then it is tacitly affirmed that human affairs would go on just as well in ignorance of the distinction; and the alleged need for commandments from God disappears.” To affirm that we know some things to be right and other things to be wrong, by virtue of a supernaturally given conscience; and thus tacitly to affirm that we do not otherwise know right from wrong, is tacitly to deny any natural relations between acts and results. For if there exist any such relations, then we may ascertain by induction, or deduction, or both, what these are. And if it be admitted that because of such natural relations happiness is produced by this kind of conduct, which is therefore to be approved; while misery is produced by that kind of conduct, which is therefore to be condemned; then it is admitted that the rightness or wrongness of actions is determinable, and must finally be determined, by the goodness or badness of the effects that flow from them, which is contrary to the hypothesis. Spencer also repeats and enlarges upon his formerly stated objections to utilitarianism as superficial: “The utilitarianism which recognizes only the principles of conduct reached by induction, is but preparatory to the utilitarianism which deduces these principles from the processes of life as carried on under established conditions of existence.”
Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently generalizes these empirically, but only when it reaches the stage at which its empirical generalizations are included in a rational generalization, does it become developed science. So with Ethics; a preparation in the simpler sciences is presupposed. It has a biological aspect; since it concerns certain effects, inner and outer, individual and social, of the vital changes going on in the highest type of animals. It has a psychological aspect; for its subject-matter is an aggregate of actions that are prompted by feelings and guided by intelligence. And it has a sociological aspect; for these actions, some of them directly, and all of them indirectly, affect associated beings. Belonging under one aspect of each of these sciences,—physical, biological, psychological, sociological,—it can find its ultimate interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are common to all of them, as different aspects of evolving life.
The Physical View
While an aggregate evolves, not only the matter composing it, but also the motion of that matter, passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity. It is so with conduct. The conduct of lowly organized creatures has its successive portions feebly connected. From these up to man may be observed an increase in cohesion. Man, even in his lowest state, displays in his conduct far more coherent combinations of motions; and in civilized man this trait of developed conduct becomes more conspicuous still. But an even greater coherence among its component motions broadly distinguishes the conduct we call moral from the conduct we call immoral. The application of the word dissolute to the last, and of the word self-restrained to the first, implies this fact. The sequences of conduct in the moral man are more easily to be specified, as implied by the word trustworthy applied to them; while those of the less principled man cannot be so specified; as is implied by the word untrustworthy. Indefiniteness accompanies incoherence in conduct that is little evolved; and throughout the ascending stages of evolving conduct there is an increasingly definite coördination of the motions constituting it, until we reach the conscientious man, who is exact in all his transactions. With this increase of definiteness and coherence goes also an increase of heterogeneity; the moral man performs more varied duties, adjustments of acts to ends in more varied relations, than does the immoral man.
Evolution in conduct is, like all other evolution, towards equilibrium,—not the equilibrium reached by the individual in death, but a moving equilibrium. His evolution consists in a continual adjustment of inner to outer relations, until a state of society shall be reached in which the individual will find his nature congruous with the environment.
The Biological View
“The truth that the ideally moral man is one in whom the moving equilibrium is perfect, or approaches nearest to perfection, becomes, when translated with physiological language, the truth that he is one in whom the functions of all kinds are duly fulfilled.” Either excess or defect in the performance of function results in a lowering of life, for the time being at least. Hence, the performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. One test of action is thus given us. An action must be classed as right or wrong in respect of its immediate bearings, according as it does or does not tend either to the maintenance of complete life for the time being or the prolongation of life to its full extent. This is true even though the remoter bearings of the action may call for a different classification. The seeming paradoxy of this statement results from the tendency, so difficult to avoid, to judge a conclusion which presupposes an ideal humanity, by its applicability to humanity as now existing. In the ideal state, towards which evolution tends, any falling short of function implies deviation from perfectly moral conduct.
“Fit connections between acts and results must establish themselves in living things, even before consciousness arises; and after the rise of consciousness these connections can change in no other way than to become better established. At the very outset, life is maintained by persistence in acts which conduce to it and desistence from acts which impede it; and whenever sentience makes its appearance as an accompaniment, its forms must be such that in the one case the produced feeling is of a kind that will be sought—pleasure, and in the other case is of a kind that will be shunned—pain.” So, in the case of the seizure of food, for example, “the pleasurable sensation,” everywhere where it arises, must be itself the stimulus to the contraction by which the pleasurable sensation is maintained and increased; or must be so bound up with the stimulus that the two increase together. “And this relation, which we see is directly established in the case of a fundamental function, must be indirectly established with all other functions; since non-establishment of it in any particular case implies, in so far, unfitness to the conditions of existence.” “Sentient existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts.”
It is true that, in mankind as at present constituted, guidance by present or proximate pleasures and pains fails throughout a wide range of cases. This arises throughout evolution by changes in the environment, from which result partial misadjustments of the feelings, necessitating readjustments. This general cause of derangement has been operating on human beings in the changes from a primitive to a civilized condition through the direct opposition and struggle of the militant and the industrial spirit, in a manner unusually decided, persistent, and involved.
But there is a still further relation between pleasure and welfare to be considered. There are connections between pleasure in general, and physiological exaltation, and between pain in general and physiological depression. Every pleasure increases vitality, every pain decreases vitality. Non-recognition of these general truths vitiates moral speculation at large. “‘You have had your gratification—it is past; and you are as you were before,’ says the moralist to one; and to another he says: ‘You have borne the suffering—it is over; and there the matter ends.’ Both statements are false; leaving out of view indirect results, the direct results are that the one has moved a step away from death, and the other has moved a step towards death.”
However, it is with the indirect results that the moralist is especially concerned; since remote consequences of action are especially to be considered in ethical questions. But doubtless a better understanding of biological truths would be to the benefit of moral theory and society at large.
Spencer especially combats, in a note at the end of this chapter, Barratt’s theory, stated in “Physical Ethics,” that movements of retraction and withdrawal and movements that secure the continuance of the impression of any acting force, are the external marks, respectively, of pain and pleasure. A great part of the vital processes, even in creatures of developed nervous systems, are carried on by unconscious reflex action, and there is, therefore, no propriety in assuming the existence of what we understand by consciousness in creatures not only devoid of nervous systems but devoid of structures in general. It is more proper to conceive such feelings as arising gradually, by the compounding of ultimate elements of consciousness.
The Psychological View
“Mind consists of feelings and the relations among feelings.41 By compositions of the relations, and ideas of relations, intelligence arises. By composition of feelings, and ideas of feelings, emotion arises. And, other things equal, the evolution of either is great in proportion as the composition is great. One of the necessary implications is that cognition becomes higher in proportion as it is remoter from reflex action; while emotion becomes higher in proportion as it is remoter from sensation.”42
“The mental process by which, in any case, the adjustment of acts to ends is effected and which, under its higher forms, becomes the subject-matter of ethical judgments, is, as above implied, divisible into the rise of a feeling or feelings constituting the motive, and the thought or thoughts through which the motive is shaped and finally issues in action. The first of these elements, originally an excitement, becomes a simple sensation; then a compound sensation; then a cluster of partially presentative and partially representative sensations, forming an incipient emotion; then a cluster of exclusively ideal or representative sensations forming an emotion proper; then a cluster of such clusters forming a compound emotion; and eventually becomes a still more involved emotion composed of the ideal forms of such compound emotions. The other element, beginning with that immediate passage of a single stimulus into a single motion, called reflex action, presently comes to be a set of associated discharges of stimuli producing associated motions; constituting instinct. Step by step arise more entangled combinations of stimuli, somewhat variable in their modes of union, leading to complex motions, similarly variable in their adjustments; whence occasional hesitations in the sensori-motor processes. Presently is reached a stage at which the combined clusters of impressions, not all present together, issue in actions not all simultaneous, implying representation of results, or thought. Afterwards follow stages in which various thoughts have time to pass before the composite motives produce the appropriate actions, until at last arise those long deliberations during which the probabilities of various consequences are estimated, and the promptings of the correlative feelings balanced; constituting calm judgment. That, under either of its aspects, the later forms of this mental process are the higher, ethically considered as well as otherwise considered, will be readily seen.”43
“Observe, then, what follows respecting the relative authorities of motives. Throughout the ascent from low creatures up to man, and from the lowest types of man to the highest, self-preservation has been increased by the subordination of simple excitations to compound excitations,—the subjection of immediate sensations to the ideas of sensations to come,—the overruling of presentative feelings by representative feelings, and of representative feelings by re-representative feelings. As life has advanced, the accompanying sentience has become increasingly ideal; and among feelings produced by the compounding of ideas, the highest, and those which are evolved latest, are the re-compounded or doubly ideal. Hence it follows that, as guides, the feelings have authorities proportionate to the degrees in which they are removed, by their complexity and their ideality, from simple sensations and appetites. A further implication is made clear by studying the intellectual sides of these mental processes by which acts are adjusted to ends. Where they are low and simple, these comprehend the guiding only of immediate acts by immediate stimuli—the entire transaction in each case, lasting but a moment, refers only to a proximate result. But with the development of intelligence and the growing ideality of the motives, the ends to which the acts are adjusted cease to be exclusively immediate. The more ideal motives concern ends that are more distant; and with approach to the highest types, present ends become increasingly subordinate to those future ends which the ideal motives have for their objects. Hence there arises a certain presumption in favor of a motive which refers to a remote good, in comparison with one which refers to a proximate good.”44
Out of the three controls of conduct, the political, the religious, and the social, the first and the last of which are generated in the social state through the supremacy of individuals in the midst of a control that is also, in some degree, exerted by the whole community, the moral consciousness grows; the feeling of moral obligation in general arising in a manner analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated, out of concrete instances. As in such groupings of instances the different components are mutually cancelled to form the abstract idea, so in groupings of the emotions, there takes place a mutual cancelling of diverse components; the common component is made relatively appreciable, and becomes an abstract feeling. That which the moral feelings—the feelings that prompt honesty, truthfulness, etc.—have in common, is complexity and re-representative character. The idea of authoritativeness has, therefore, come to be connected with feelings having these traits: the implication being that the lower and simpler feelings are without authority. Another element—that of coerciveness—originated from experience of those several forms of restraint that have established themselves in the course of civilization—the political, religious, and social. By punishment is generated the sense of compulsion which the consciousness of duty includes, and which the word obligation indicates. This sense, however, becomes indirectly connected with the feelings distinguished as moral; and slowly fades as these emerge from amidst the political, religious, and social motives, and become distinct and predominant. The sense of duty is, therefore, transitory, fading as a motive as pleasure in right-doing is evolved.
The Sociological View
“Not for the human race only, but for every race, there are laws of right living. Given its environment and its structure, and there is, for each kind of creature, a set of actions adapted in their kinds, amounts, and combinations, to secure the highest conservation its nature permits.” Yet in man we find an additional factor in the formula for life: for man is sociable to a degree not found anywhere else among animals. The conditions of the associated state have therefore called for an emphasizing of those restraints on conduct entailed by the presence of fellow-men. “From the sociological point of view, then, Ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise that the lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length and breadth.” “But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to put in the foreground the welfare of citizens, individually considered, and requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the lives of its units.” These two ends are not harmonious at the outset, since as long as communities are endangered by rival communities, a sacrifice of private to public claims is necessary. When, however, antagonism between communities shall cease, there will cease to be any public claims at variance with private claims; the need for the subordination of individual lives to the general life will cease, and the latter, having from the beginning had furtherance of individual lives as its ultimate purpose, will come to have this as its proximate purpose. Between the commands of duty towards members of the same community and towards those of different communities as between the sentiments answering to these relations, there is, at present, conflict. In the course of evolution, however, the various forms of subjection countenanced by a warlike régime—slavery, the subjection of women to men, and paternal absolutism, become more and more unpopular, and are done away with. For each kind and degree of social evolution, there is an appropriate compromise between the moral code of enmity and that of amity; this is, for the time being, authoritative.45 But such compromise belongs to incomplete conduct; the end of evolution is in the annihilation of enmity between societies as between individuals. Nor is a mere abstinence from mutual injury enough. Without coöperation for satisfying wants the social state loses its raison d’être. In all efforts for coöperation equivalence of exchange is a necessary basis; all failure to fulfil such equivalence causes antagonism and thus a diminution of social coherence; in the social, as in the animal organism, waste without repair destroys the equilibrium of the parts; fulfilment of contract is, therefore, the primary condition of the welfare of society.
And even mutual punctiliousness in the fulfilment of contract is not sufficient to the moral ideal. Daily experience proves that every one would suffer many evils and lose many goods, did none give him unpaid assistance. The limit of the evolution of conduct is not reached until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others. The form of nature which thus adds beneficence to justice, is one which adaptation to the social state produces. “The social man has not reached that harmonization of constitution with conditions forming the limit of evolution, so long as there remains space for the growth of faculties which, by their exercise, bring positive benefit to others and satisfaction to self. If the presence of fellow-men, while putting certain limits to each man’s sphere of activity, opens certain other spheres of activity in which feelings, while achieving their gratifications, do not diminish but add to the gratifications of others, then such spheres will inevitably be occupied.”46 But of beneficence, as well as of justice, sympathy is the root.
The assumption that feelings can be arranged in a scale of desirability, against which Mr. Sidgwick especially argues in his objections to (empirical) egoistic hedonism, is not necessarily an element of such hedonism, although Bentham, in naming intensity, duration, certainty, and proximity as traits entering into an estimation of the relative value of a pleasure or pain, has committed himself to it. But if a debtor who cannot pay offers to compound for his debt by making over to me any one of various objects of property, will I not endeavor to estimate their relative value, though I may not be able to do it exactly; and if I choose wrongly is therefore the ground of choice to be abandoned? Mr. Sidgwick’s argument against empirical hedonism must tell, moreover, in a still greater degree, against his own utilitarianism, since this is applicable, not to the individual simply, but to many classes of differing individuals. To this difficulty must be added, moreover, the future indeterminateness of the means for obtaining such universal happiness. Mr. Sidgwick’s objection contains, however, a partial truth; for guidance in the pursuit of happiness through the mere balancing of pleasures and pains is, if partially practicable throughout a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider range. “It is quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate aim of action, and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the immediate aim. I go with Mr. Sidgwick as far as the conclusion that ‘we must at least admit the desirability of confirming or correcting the results of such comparisons (of pleasures and pains) by any other method upon which we may find reason to rely’; and I then go further, and say that throughout a large part of conduct guidance by such comparisons is to be entirely set aside and replaced by other guidance.”
The fact cited by Mr. Sidgwick as the “fundamental paradox of hedonism,” that to get the pleasures of pursuit one must “forget” them, is explained by the fact that the pleasures of pursuit lie greatly in the consciousness of capability in the efficient use of means, and the sense of the admiration excited thereby in others. And so the “fundamental paradox” disappears. Yet the truth of the pleasure derived from means as distinguished from ends is of significance. Throughout the evolution of conduct we find a growing complexity of adjustment of acts to ends, the interposition of more and more complex means, each as a step to the next, and leading to the final attainment of even remoter ends. Of these means, each set, with its accompanying satisfaction, developed with the function, comes at last to be regarded as proximate end, and constitutes an obligation; and each later and higher order of means comes to take precedence in time and authoritativeness of each earlier and lower order of means. In this manner arises the authoritativeness of moral requirements, as designating the latest and highest order of means.
Such means are more determinable than the end—happiness—for any society. What constitutes happiness is more difficult of determination than what constitutes the means of its attainment. We may now see our way to reconciling sundry conflicting ethical theories, which generally embody portions of the truth, and simply require to be combined in proper order in order to embody the whole truth. The theological theory contains a part. If for the divine will, supposed to be supernaturally revealed, we substitute the naturally revealed end towards which the Power manifested throughout Evolution works; then, since evolution has been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that conformity to those principles by which the highest life is achieved, is furtherance of that end. The doctrine that perfection or excellence of nature should be the purpose of pursuit, is in one sense true; for it tacitly recognizes that ideal form of being which the highest life implies, and to which evolution tends. There is a truth, also, in the doctrine that virtue must be the aim; for this is another form of the doctrine that the aim must be to fulfil the conditions to achievement of the highest life. That the intuitions of a moral faculty should guide our conduct is a proposition in which a truth is contained; for these intuitions are the slowly organized results of experiences received by the race while living in presence of these conditions. And that happiness is the supreme end is beyond question true; for it is the concomitant of that highest life which every theory of moral guidance has, distinctly or vaguely, in view.
Thus, those ethical systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the cardinal aims, are seen to be complementary to those ethical systems which make welfare, happiness, pleasure, the cardinal aims.
Spencer follows up this argument with a chapter on the relativity of pleasures and pains, and then proceeds with an argument against excessive altruism as, in the end, selfish, since it is destructive to the power for work and to individual life, diminishes the vigor of offspring, and finally results in the survival of the less altruistic as the fittest; this chapter is under the heading “Egoism versus Altruism.” It is followed by a chapter on Altruism versus Egoism, in which is shown that some individual self-sacrifice, at least to offspring, is found far down in the scale of being; that altruism is, therefore, “no less primordial than self-preservation,”47 and hence no less imperative; that this altruism, at first unconscious, becomes, in higher stages of evolution, conscious; and that if often selfish in motive, it may be without any element of conscious self-regard, although it conduces greatly to egoistic satisfaction. Indeed, pure egoism defeats itself, since pleasure palls by over-indulgence, is dulled by maturity, and almost destroyed by old age. He that can find pleasure in ministering to that of others has, however, a source of pleasure which may serve in place of personal pleasure. In the associated state, a certain altruism is, and must necessarily be, an advantage to each member of the community. Whatever conduces to the well-being of each is conducive to the well-being of all.
Here follows a criticism of utilitarianism as one form of pure altruism, since, according to the utilitarian doctrine, each individual is to count for one, not more than one, and the individual share of happiness thus becomes infinitesimal as compared with general happiness. Shall A, who has, by labor, acquired some material happiness, take the attitude of a disinterested spectator with regard to their use, as Mr. Mill recommends? And will he, as such, decide on a division of these means to happiness with B, C, and D, who have not labored to produce them? From the conclusion that a really disinterested spectator would not decree any such division, Spencer seems to draw the conclusion that Mr. Mill’s position is untenable. He further illustrates the untenability of utilitarianism (as pure altruism) by the figure of a cluster of bodies generating heat, each of which will have, as long as it generates heat for itself, a certain amount of proper heat and a certain amount of heat derived from the others; whereas the whole cluster will become cold as soon as each ceases to generate heat for itself and depends on the heat generated by the rest. Utilitarianism involves the further paradox that, to achieve the greatest sum of happiness, each individual must be more egoistic than altruistic. “For, speaking generally, sympathetic pleasures must ever continue less intense than the pleasures with which there is sympathy.” And while the individual must be extremely unegoistic in that he is willing to yield up the benefit for which he has labored, he must, at the same time, be extremely egoistic, since he is so selfish as willingly to let others yield up to him the benefits they have labored for. “To assume that egoistic pleasures may be relinquished to any extent is to fall into one of those many errors of ethical speculation which result from ignoring the laws of biology.... To yield up normal pleasure is to yield up so much life; and there arises the question:—to what extent may this be done?... Surrender, carried to a certain point, is extremely mischievous, and to a further point, fatal.”48 After beginning, however, with this assertion that to assume that egoistic pleasure may be relinquished to any extent is to fall, from ignorance of biology, into an error of ethical speculation, Spencer reaches only the conclusion that, if the individual is to continue living, he must take “certain amounts” of those pleasures which go along with the fulfilment of the bodily functions, and that “the portion of happiness which it is possible for him to yield up for redistribution is a limited portion.” He further argues that “a perfectly moral law must be one which becomes perfectly practicable as human nature becomes perfect”; but that the law of utilitarianism does not so become practicable, since opportunities for practising altruism, which originate in imperfection in others, will diminish and finally disappear in the ideal state. There is no addition to happiness by redistribution, and there is the additional labor and loss of time of such redistribution. The conclusion must be that “general happiness is to be achieved mainly through the adequate pursuit of their own happiness by individuals, while reciprocally, the happiness of individuals is to be achieved in part by their pursuit of the general happiness.” The chapter on the conciliation of altruism and egoism is occupied with the development of sympathy, as the militant spirit grows less. The expression of emotion, as also the power of interpreting such expression, must become greater as the impelling cause to concealment found in lack of sympathy, disappears. When conditions require any class of activities to be relatively great, there will arise a relatively great pleasure accompanying that class of activities; the scope for altruistic activities will not exceed the desire for altruistic satisfaction. Such altruistic satisfaction, though in a transfigured sense egoistic, will not be pursued egoistically—that is, from egoistic motives. General altruism will resist too great altruism in the individual, and as the occasion for self-sacrifice disappears, altruism will take on the ultimate form of sympathy with the pleasure of others produced by the successful activities of these. And so there will disappear the apparently permanent opposition between egoism and altruism.
The last two chapters of “The Data of Ethics” deal with Ethics as the law of the ideal man in an ideal society, and treat of the attainment of general principles in this science as in other sciences by the neglect of conflicting factors, and the recognition of fundamental factors, in the gradually accumulated knowledge of society. On account of the diversity of men and societies, a code of perfect personal conduct can never be made definite; only certain general conditions of perfection can be pointed out. As life is now carried on, the conflict of claims is continual; and ethical science, here necessarily empirical, can do no more than aid in making least objectionable compromises. Absolute Ethics, which supplies the law of perfect right-doing possible only in an ideal state, does not greatly aid Relative Ethics, yet it aids somewhat, as keeping before consciousness an ideal conciliation of claims, and suggesting search for the best form of compromise possible under the circumstances.
“Justice,” which constitutes Part IV. of “The Principles of Ethics,” and to which “The Data of Ethics” belongs as Part I., was published (1891) in advance of Parts II. and III. The argument of the book runs as follows:—
Ethics properly involves a consideration of the conduct of animals as well as of human beings, for the primary subject-matter of Ethics is conduct considered as producing good and bad results to self or others, or both, not, as most people believe, conduct as calling forth approbation or disapprobation. And even on this latter view, Ethics includes Animal Ethics, since we feel approbation or disapprobation with regard to many actions of animals.
Animal Ethics includes, as its two cardinal principles, the opposed classes of altruistic and egoistic acts. For preservation of the species, benefits received must be, during immaturity, inversely proportionate to merit or capacities possessed, merit being measured by powers of self-sustentation, and after maturity, directly proportionate to worth as measured by fitness to the conditions of existence. Furthermore, though the species is made up of individuals, many of these individuals may disappear and the species still be preserved, whereas its disappearance as a whole involves absolute failure in achieving the end, so that, where preservation of individuals conflicts with preservation of the species, the individuals must be sacrificed.
The principle that among adults benefits must be in proportion to merits, implies in its biological aspect survival of the fittest. Its violation involves double harm to the species by sacrifice of the superior to the inferior, and consequent increase of the inferior. “Interpreted in ethical terms, it is that each individual ought to be subject to the effects of its own nature and resulting conduct”; and throughout sub-human life this rule holds without qualification. The same principle is displayed in the mutual relations of the parts of organisms, every part being nourished in proportion to its use or function, a balancing of the relative powers of the parts being thus effected, and the organism “fitted as a whole to its existence by having its parts continuously proportioned to the requirements.” In a parallel manner, the species as a whole is fitted to its environment by the greater prosperity to self and offspring that comes to those better adapted.
But sub-human justice is extremely imperfect, alike in general and in detail.
In general it is imperfect, in that the sustentation of multitudinous species depends on the wholesale destruction of others; so that, in the species serving as prey, the relations between conduct and consequence are so habitually broken that in very few individuals are they long maintained. It is true the destruction of the species serving as prey is the result of their natures; “but this violent ending of the immense majority implies that the species is one in which justice, as above conceived, is displayed in but small measure.” Sub-human justice is also imperfect in detail, in that the relation between conduct and consequences is, in such an immense proportion of cases, broken by accidents,—such as scarcity of food, inclemencies of weather, invasions by parasites, attacks of enemies,—which fall indiscriminately on the superior and the inferior. As organization becomes higher, sub-human justice becomes more decided; as general superiority increases, there is less dependence on accident, and individual differences become more important.
With the beginning of gregariousness, we find the new element of coöperation, passive or active, which is an advantage to the species. This involves so much restraint of conflicting acts as will leave a balance of advantage; else survival of the fittest will exterminate the variety in which association begins. The experience of the evils of not maintaining such limits to action results in an inherited tendency to maintain them. The general consciousness of the need for maintaining them results in punishment of their disregard. Self-subordination among solitary animals is found only in parenthood; among gregarious animals there is a further subjection of the individual to his kind, and where an occasional sacrifice of life furthers the preservation of species, sub-human justice may rightly have this second limitation.
In order of priority, the law of relation between conduct and consequence, the principle that each individual ought to receive the good and evil resulting from his own nature, stands first; it is the primary law holding of all creatures. The law of the restraint, in gregarious animals, of interfering acts, is second in time and authority, and is simply a specification of the form which the primary law takes under conditions of gregarious life, since, in asserting restriction of the interactions of conduct and consequence, it tacitly reasserts that these interactions must be maintained in other individuals, that is, in all individuals. The third law, of the occasional sacrifice of individuals to their kind, is later and narrower in application, and a qualification of the first law. The first law is absolute for animals in general; the second is absolute for gregarious animals; but the third “is relative to the existence of enemies of such kinds that, in contending with them, the species gains more than it loses by the sacrifice of a few members; and in the absence of such enemies this qualification imposed by the third law disappears.”
As human life is a development of sub-human life, so human justice is a development of sub-human justice. According to pure justice, the individual should suffer the consequences of his acts, and that such is the general opinion is implied in such common expressions as: “He has no one to blame but himself”; “He has made his own bed, and now he must lie on it”; “He has got no more than he deserved”; or, “He has fairly earned his reward.”
The truth that, with higher organization, danger from accident becomes less, longevity is greater, and so differences count for more, showing their effects for longer periods, and justice therefore becomes greater, applies also to human beings. The rate of mortality decreases with man, and according to his civilization.
More clearly in the case of human beings than in that of other animals is it shown that gregariousness establishes itself because it profits the variety. Where a variety live on wild food, they associate only in small groups; game and fruit, widely distributed, can support these only. “But greater gregariousness arises where agriculture makes possible the support of a large number on a small area; and where the accompanying development of industries introduces many and various coöperations.” The advantages of coöperation can be had only by conformity to the conditions which association imposes—by such limitation of the pursuits of individuals as to leave a surplus of advantage to associated life. “This truth is illustrated by the unprosperous or decaying state of communities in which the trespasses of individuals on one another are so numerous and great as generally to prevent them from severally receiving the normal results of their labors.” Mutual restraint being more imperative with human beings than with animals, there is with them a still more marked habit of punishment.
“Through all which sets of facts is manifested the truth, recognized practically if not theoretically, that each individual, carrying on the actions which subserve his life, and not prevented from receiving their normal results, good and bad, shall carry on these actions under such restraints as are imposed by the carrying on of kindred actions by other individuals, who have similarly to receive such normal results, good and bad. And vaguely, if not definitely, this is seen to constitute what is called justice.”
In the highest gregarious creature, the necessity which we found, of an occasional sacrifice of the individual in defence of species, assumes large proportions, the defence being not only against enemies of other kinds, but also against enemies of the same kind. This obligation is less than that of care for offspring, or mutual restraint. It exists only as necessary to protect the society against destruction, hence only for defensive, not for offensive, war. It may be objected that war peoples the earth with the stronger, but this is not necessarily so, since the conquered may merely be fewer in number. And further, it is only during the earlier stages of human progress that the development of strength, courage, and cunning are of chief importance. But for an accident, Persia would have conquered Greece; and Tartar hordes once very nearly overwhelmed European civilization. The races best fitted for social life do not necessarily conquer, and there are injurious moral reactions on both conquering and conquered. Only defensive war retains a quasi-ethical justification. It belongs, however, to a transitional state, and is not justified by Absolute Ethics.
As the organs of inferior animals are moulded into fitness for the requirements of life, so, simultaneously, through nervous modifications, their sensations, instincts, emotions, and intellectual aptitudes are also moulded to these requirements,—in the gregarious animals to the conditions of gregarious life. Many evolutionists appear to regard the variability of man as ceasing with civilized life, but the whole analogy of nature is against such a theory; we must assume that man, like other animals, is moulded to suit his requirements, and that moral changes are among those thus wrought out. Aggressive actions often entail suffering on the individuals of a group performing them, as well as on the group as a whole, and on the other hand, harmonious coöperation in a group profits the average of its members; so that there is a tendency to survival of groups having such adaptation of nature. And just as a love of property, formerly gratified by possession of food and shelter, came later to be extended to the weapons for obtaining these, and, later, even to the raw materials, the pleasure in ownership becoming more and more abstract and remote from material satisfaction, so the natural impatience of animal nature at restraint of its powers becomes in man a sentiment of egoistic justice, for justice requires the free play of all forces in order that the results of character may fall upon the individual. It is more difficult to understand how the altruistic sentiment of justice comes into being. On one hand, its implication is that it can be developed only by adaptation to social life; on the other, it appears that social life is impossible without the maintenance of those equitable relations which imply a sentiment of justice. These requirements are fulfilled by a pro-altruistic sentiment of justice, which takes its place. The first deterrent from aggression, among animals, is fear of retaliation; a further restraint, with man, is fear of reprobation or social disgrace. To these are to be added the feelings arising under political and religious authority—the dread of legal punishment and the dread of divine vengeance; and these four kinds of feelings coöperate, forming a body of feeling, which checks the primitive tendency to pursue the objects of desire without regard to the interests of fellow-men, and though containing nothing of the altruistic sentiment of justice, makes social coöperation possible. Creatures which become gregarious, tend to become sympathetic in degrees proportionate to their intelligence—by sympathy being meant the arousing of kindred feeling by the witness of a display of feeling in others, sympathy being fostered by common enjoyments and sufferings. The altruistic sentiment of justice is slow in assuming a high form, “partly because its primary component does not become highly developed until a late phase of progress, partly because it is relatively complex, and partly because it implies a stretch of imagination not possible for low intelligences.” As, until pain has been felt, there cannot be sympathy with pain, so the altruistic sentiment of justice cannot be developed until the egoistic sentiment has arisen; moreover, the sentiment of justice is concerned, not only with concrete pains and pleasures, but also with their conditions, and hence this sentiment demands a development of the power of mental representation.
There is a close connection between the sentiment of justice and the social type. Predominant militancy affords no scope for the egoistic sentiment of justice, and at the same time sympathy is perpetually seared by militant activities. On the other hand, as fast as voluntary coöperation, which characterizes the industrial type of society, becomes more general than compulsory coöperation, which characterizes the militant type of society, individual activities become less restrained, and the sentiment which rejoices in the scope for them is encouraged; while simultaneously, the occasions for repressing the sympathies become less frequent.
The idea of justice is different from the mere sentiment of justice; the former gradually arising from the latter, in the course of generations, by experience of the limits to which action can be carried without causing resentment from others. But since the kinds of activity are many and become increasingly various with the development of social life, it is a long time before the general nature of the limit common to all cases can be conceived. A further reason for the slowness of development is, that the arising ideas of justice have been perpetually confused by the conflicting requirements of internal amity and external enmity.
Two elements, a positive and a negative, constitute the idea of justice—that of man’s recognition of his claims to unimpeded activities and the results they bring, and that of the limits which the presence of other men necessitate. The primordial ideal suggested is inequality, for since the principal is that each should receive the results due to his own nature, then, since men differ in their powers, unequal benefits are implied. But mutual limitations suggest a contrary idea, experience showing that the bounds to which one may pursue his own ends are, on the average, the same for all, so that the idea of equality arises. Unbalanced appreciations of these two factors in human justice lead to divergent moral and social theories.
Among the rudest men the appreciations are no higher than among inferior gregarious animals. Where war has developed political organization the idea of inequality predominates, but the idea is one, not of natural, but of artificial apportionment. And in general, we find that the primary or brute factor in justice is but little qualified by the human factor.
All movements are rhythmical, social movements included, and after the idea of justice in which inequality predominates comes a conception in which the idea of equality unduly predominates—as in Bentham’s ethical theory, where “one person’s happiness, supposed equal in degree (with proper allowance made for kind), is accounted for exactly as much as another’s”; and this is the theory which Communism would reduce to practice. It is an absolute denial of the principle of inequality, and must apply alike to the worthy and unworthy, as well as to the superior and inferior in physical and intellectual capacities, since moral inequalities are as much inherited as others. Here we have a deliberate abolition of that cardinal distinction between the ethics of the family and the ethics of the state emphasized at the outset—“an abolition which, as we saw, must eventuate in decay and disappearance of the species or variety in which it takes place.”
The true principle shows an amalgamation of these two. “The equality concerns the mutually limited spheres of action which must be maintained if associated men are to coöperate harmoniously. The inequality concerns the results which each may achieve by carrying on his actions within the implied limits. No incongruity exists when the ideas of equality and inequality are applied, the one to the bounds and the other to the benefits. Contrariwise, the two may be, and must be, simultaneously asserted.”
“Any considerable acceptance of so definite an idea of justice is not to be expected. It is an idea appropriate to an ultimate state, and can be but partially entertained during transitional states; for the prevailing ideas must, on the average, be congruous with existing institutions and activities.” During the thirty, or rather forty years’ peace, and weakening of militant organization, the idea of justice became clearer; but since then the idea of regimentation has spread. It is predominant in the conception of socialism with its army of workers with appointed tasks and apportioned shares of products, and every act of Parliament which takes money from the individual for public purposes shows a tendency in the same direction. In the countries where militancy is most pronounced, socialism is most highly developed. “Sympathy, which, a generation ago, was taking the shape of justice, is relapsing into generosity; and the generosity is exercised by inflicting injustice. Daily legislation betrays little anxiety that each shall have that which belongs to him, but great anxiety that he shall have that which belongs to somebody else.”
The formula of justice may be expressed thus: “Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.”
This is not to be interpreted as meaning that aggression is permissible as long as retaliation is permitted; for the formula means that interference with another’s life is limited, that life shall not be impeded in one case further than is necessary to the maintenance of other lives; it does not countenance a superfluous interference on the ground that an equal interference may balance it. In earlier stages, the conception of justice was this erroneous one of a balancing of injuries—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By oscillations which become gradually less, social equilibrium is approached; and with this approach to equilibrium comes approach to a definite theory of equilibrium.
In the reigning school of politics and morals, scorn is expressed for every doctrine which implies restraint of immediate expediency, or what appears to be such;—contempt for generalizations and abstract principles, with unlimited faith in political machinery. Strangely enough, we find this approval of political empiricism and disbelief in any other guidance, in the world of science also. The accepted scientific fact that causation holds of the actions of incorporated men as of other parts of nature, remains a dead letter; there is no attempt to identify the causation, and ridicule is visited upon those who endeavor to find a definite expression for the fundamental principle of harmonious social order.
Peoples with whom confusion is not caused by the conflicting disciplines of outer war and internal peace, early arrive at the principle of equity, and accordingly some uncivilized tribes show a stronger sense of it than is found among civilized peoples. Nevertheless, the conception of justice has slowly evolved to some extent, and is expressed in such formulæ as, “Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you” (too sweeping a statement of the equality of claims, since it implies no recognition of the inequality necessary in the shares of good respectively appropriate), or in the Kantian rule, which is an allotropic form of the Christian rule. Jurists, too, have recognized a natural law of equity underlying human law. To the reproach that belief in such a law is an a priori belief, it may be answered that a priori beliefs are explained by the theory of evolution, as arising with determination of the nervous system and certain resulting necessities of thought, and that they differ from a posteriori beliefs merely in the circumstance “that they are the products of the experiences of innumerable successive individuals, instead of the experiences of a single individual.” If we ask for the ground of the greatest happiness principle, we come to an a priori belief also; for whence is the postulate? If it is an induction, where and by whom has the induction been drawn; and if it is a truth of experience derived from careful observation, then what are the observations, and when was there generalized that vast mass of them on which all politics and morals should be built? “Not only are there no such experiences, no such observations, no such inductions, but it is impossible that any should be assigned.” The like is true of Bentham’s rule: “Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one,” and also of the objection to this rule, that happiness cannot be divided, or greatest happiness obtained, by equal division of the means to happiness; they all lead, in the last analysis, to an a priori belief. Moreover, the rule of natural equity, the freedom of each limited only by the like freedom of all, is not an exclusively a priori belief, but although the immediate dictum of the human consciousness after subjection to the discipline of prolonged social life, it is deducible from the conditions to be fulfilled, firstly for the maintenance of life at large, and secondly for the maintenance of social life.
Rights, properly so-called, are corollaries from the law of equal freedom, and “so far is it from its being true, as some claim, that the warrant for what are properly called rights is derived from law, it is, conversely, true that law derives its warrant from them.”
In the application of this theory to practical questions, Mr. Spencer’s “Justice” differs from “Social Statics,” which it resembles in form and method, in general in the greatly increased conservatism of the views expressed. This is shown in all parts of the book, though perhaps most clearly in those parts relating to the Rights of Women, to the Land Question, and to the Limits of State-Duties. “Social Statics” advocated land-nationalization; but “Justice,” though still asserting the original right of the aggregate of men forming the community to the use of the earth, as that from which all material objects capable of being owned are derived and so that on which the right to property is originally dependent, denies the expediency and the justice of a present redistribution of the land according to this principle; and this because of the confusion of claims at the present time, the impossibility of ascertaining whose ancestors were the robbers and whose the robbed in the gradually arising monopoly, the wrong of making descendants responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and leaving those now dependent on the land without compensation for their loss, and the fact that any claim to the land is merely a claim to it in its original condition, not in its present state of drainage and cultivation effected by the labor of generations. Moreover, “under the existing system of ownership, those who manage the land experience a direct connection between effort and benefit, while, were it under state-ownership, those who managed it would experience no such direct connection. The vices of officialism would inevitably entail immense evils.”
The whole of the practical part of “Justice” is especially directed against Socialism; in general, the course of history shows a less and less interference with personal freedom, and growing benefit from this cause. The practicality of woman suffrage and of universal man suffrage at the present time is denied. If earlier legislation was too much for the benefit of wealthy and ruling classes, recent extensions of the suffrage have resulted in still more injurious class-legislation of another sort.
In this book, Mr. Spencer seems to adhere to his theory of a “final perfect adaptation to the conditions of social life.” Not only is the distinction between Relative and Absolute Ethics still drawn, but there are numerous references to an “ultimate state,” though certain of these references might suggest the view that by such a state was meant only the attainment of so great a degree of civilization as would involve the cessation of wars.49 Other passages, however, seem to contradict this view. One may be especially cited; it is as follows: “This law [of the gradual reëstablishment of deranged harmony, through adaptation and heredity], holding of human beings among others, implies that the nature which we inherit from an uncivilized past, and which is still very imperfectly fitted to the partially-civilized present, will, if allowed to do so, slowly adjust itself to the requirements of a fully-civilized future.” And after some consideration of adaptation up to the present time, the paragraph concludes: “If, in the course of these few thousand years, the discipline of social life has done so much, it is folly to suppose that it cannot do more—folly to suppose that it will not, in course of time, do all that has to be done.”50 But in the abridged and revised edition of “Social Statics” (1892), the following passage occurs as part of a note at the end of the chapter on “The Evanescence (? Diminution) of Evil.” “The rate of progress towards any adapted form must diminish with the approach to complete adaptation, since the force producing it must diminish; so that other causes apart, perfect adaptation can be reached only in infinite time.”51
Vol. I. of “The Principles of Ethics,” including Parts I., II., and III., appeared in August, 1892. In this volume, “The Data of Ethics,” reprinted as Part I., remains unchanged, except for one or two unimportant sentences. To this Part I. is, however, appended a chapter which was, according to Mr. Spencer, written for the first publication of “The Data of Ethics,” but was either put aside for some reason, or else overlooked, probably the latter, says the author, since it contains material which should have been embodied. The chapter is headed “The Conciliation,” and seems to correspond to the two chapters on “Trial and Compromise” and “Conciliation” which follow the chapters on “Egoism versus Altruism,” and “Altruism versus Egoism”; for it begins with a consideration of the conflict of claims shown by “the last two chapters,” the apparent impossibility of the establishment of an equilibrium, and the consequent apparent necessity of self-sacrifice. But this conflict between egoism and altruism is merely transitional and is in process of gradual disappearance, in the same manner in which the present degree of conciliation of the two has been reached,—namely, by the growth of such a constitution in each creature as entails pleasure in altruistic action. Even with the lower animals, the acts which are necessary to care for ova or young are the fulfilment of an instinct which is gratified by the act; and in the human race, conciliation between egoism and altruism, which goes hand in hand with evolution, has reached a high degree. In the evolution of the human race itself, from savagery to its present condition, there has been a marked increase of this conciliation; this is true not only in the family, but to a small extent also with regard to the larger groups of men constituting societies. There is decrease of cruelty, increase of justice, both in the form of state institutions and in their methods of administration, more active benevolence, and a public sentiment that leads large numbers of people to find egoistic gratification in the pursuit of the general good even to the neglect of private interests. Self-sacrifice thus ceases to be sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the word, since it comes to bring with it more pleasure than pain. The future must hold in store changes analogous to those of the past, but these must go on much more rapidly under the present comparatively peaceful organization of society than they have during the militant life of the past. This moral development is retarded, however, not only by the degree of militancy yet existing, but also by the necessity for a certain degree of bluntness of feeling, too great sensitiveness to the suffering of others entailing, while the pressure of population is as great as at present, a misery that would make life intolerable. It is likely that, with social progress, human fertility will decrease as cerebral activity increases, until a comparative balance of fertility and mortality is reached as “human evolution approaches its limit of complete adaptation to the social state”; and sympathy will increase in proportion, no longer entailing on its possessor more of pain than of pleasure, but the contrary. “Sympathy is the root of every other kind of altruism than that which, from the beginning, originates the parental activities. It is the root of that higher altruism which, apart from the philoprogenitive instinct, produces desire for the happiness of others and reluctance to inflict pain upon them. These two traits are inevitably associated. The same mental faculty which reproduces in the individual consciousness the feelings that are being displayed by other beings, acts equally to reproduce those states when they are pleasurable or when they are painful.”
The general corollary from the above-described process of evolution is that, with the increase of sympathy there arises the double result, that by its increase it tends to decrease the causes of human misery, and in proportion as it does this, it becomes itself the cause of further reflected happiness received by each from others. “And the limit towards which this evolution approaches is one under which, as the amount of pain suffered by those around from individual imperfections and from imperfections of social arrangement and conduct, becomes relatively small, and simultaneously the growth of sympathy goes on with little check, the sympathy becomes at the same time almost exclusively a source of pleasure received from the happiness of others, and not of pains received from their pains. And as this condition is approached, the function of sympathy is not that of stimulating to self-sacrifice and of entailing upon its possessor positive or negative pain, but its function becomes that of making him a recipient of positive pleasure.” Thus altruism will overgrow egoism, becoming itself a source of egoistic pleasure, and eventually, with the diminution of the pressure of population, there will come a state in which egoism and altruism are so conciliated that the one merges in the other.
Among the social animals, with the ant and the bee, for instance, who cannot be supposed to possess a sense of duty, we see that this identification of egoism and altruism, as necessary to social life, has taken place to a considerable extent; and since pleasure of every kind is the concomitant of nervous structure, we can understand the pleasure in altruistic as well as in egoistic activities, as soon as there exists the nervous structure answering to these activities. As certainly as there yet exist in civilized men instincts of the chase inherited from savage ancestors, there are growing up and will continue to grow up in men, these other structures which will prompt to altruistic activities.
Part II. of “The Principles of Ethics” is concerned with “The Inductions of Ethics.” It opens with a chapter on the confusion of ethical thought due to the fact that, conforming to the general law of evolution, “the set of conceptions constituting ethics, together with the associated sentiments, arise out of a relatively incoherent and indefinite consciousness; and slowly acquire coherence and definiteness at the same time that the aggregate of them differentiates from the larger aggregate with which it originally mingled. Long remaining undistinguished, and then but vaguely discernible as something independent, ethics must be expected to acquire a distinct embodiment only when mental evolution has reached a high stage.” “Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution. Religion itself, in its earliest form, is undistinguished from ancestor-worship,” which passes, in the second stage, into worship of dead rulers, and is a method of propitiation, prompted by self-interest. Among some peoples, the idea of sin is limited to offences against the gods; and in those other cases where there are ethical commands, the propriety of not offending God is the primary reason given for obeying them. This last phase of thought is illustrated by the religion of the Hebrews, among whom good and bad conduct was but little associated with the intrinsic natures of right and wrong. The popular belief is still that right and wrong become such by divine fiat.
The gods of primitive, warlike peoples were gods of war, and the belief in the moral virtue and honor of war still holds large place in the thought of the world. The ethics of enmity, thus taught at the same time with the ethics of amity necessary to the internal life of society, gave rise to utterly inconsistent and contradictory sentiments and ideas, which, in considerable measure, still exist side by side, in our churches and outside them.
But, together with these ethical conceptions, there have slowly evolved other, utilitarian conceptions, derived from a recognition of the natural consequences of acts. Authority has been introduced into these conceptions as the source of the duty of action in accordance with them; yet there has generally been also some perception of their fitness. Such utilitarian conceptions are to be found in the later Hebrew writings, among the Egyptians, Greeks, etc. “The divergence of expediency-ethics from theological ethics is well illustrated in Paley, who in his official character derived right and wrong from divine commands, and in his unofficial character derived them from observation of consequences. Since his day, the last of these views has spread at the expense of the first.”
A still further simultaneous origin of moral dictates is found in the sentiments which have arisen with such habits of conformity to rules of conduct as have been furthered by survival of the fittest. We thus have a conflict of ethical ideas arising from the conflict of these various sanctions; and also from the further conflict that ensues where a later religion has been grafted on a more primitive one, as is the case everywhere in Christendom.
Among modern writers who assert the existence of a moral sense, there is a division between those who regard the dicta of conscience as supreme, and those who hold them to be subordinate to divine commands. The two are agreed in so far as they regard conscience as having a supernatural origin; and, in that they both recognize the moral sentiment as innate and suppose human nature to be everywhere the same, they are also, by implication, alike in supposing that the moral sentiment is identical in all men.
But as a matter of fact, the moral sentiment is connected with entirely different rules among different peoples, prescribing monogamy among one people, polygamy among another; demanding faithfulness and chastity on the part of women among one people, encouraging adultery among another, etc.
Common elements in all codes of rules for conduct are the consciousness of authority, whether that of a God, of a ruler or government, or of conscience, the more or less definite sense of power or coercion on the part of this authority, and the representation of public opinion. These elements, combined in different proportions, result in an idea and a feeling of obligation, forming a body of thought and feeling which may be termed pro-ethical, and which, with the mass of mankind, stands in place of the ethical.
“For now let us observe that the ethical sentiment and idea, properly so-called, are independent of the ideas and sentiments above described as derived from external authorities, and coercions, and approbations—religious, political, or social. The true moral consciousness which we name conscience does not refer to those extrinsic results of conduct which take the shape of praise or blame, reward or punishment, externally awarded; but it refers to the intrinsic results of conduct which in part and by some intellectually perceived, are mainly and by most intuitively felt. The moral consciousness proper does not contemplate obligations as artificially imposed by an external power; nor is it chiefly occupied with estimates of the amounts of pleasure and pain which given actions may produce, though these may be clearly or dimly perceived; but it is chiefly occupied with recognition of, and regard for, those conditions by fulfilment of which happiness is achieved or misery avoided.” It may or may not be in harmony with the pro-ethical sentiment; but in any case it is “vaguely or distinctly recognized as the rightful ruler, responding as it does to consequences which are not artificial and variable, but to consequences which are natural and permanent.” With the established supremacy of this ethical sentiment, the feeling of obligation retires into the background, right actions being performed “spontaneously or from liking.” “Though, while the moral nature is imperfectly developed, there may often arise conformity to the ethical sentiment under a sense of compulsion by it; and though, in other cases, non-conformity to it may cause subsequent self-reproach (as instance a remembered lack of gratitude, which may be a source of pain without there being any thought of extrinsic penalty); yet with a moral nature completely balanced, neither of these feelings will arise, because that which is done is done in satisfaction of the appropriate desire.”
Where the really ethical sentiment conflicts with the factitious idea and sentiment of obedience to legal authority, the latter may rule at the expense of the former, as, for instance, in the case of a pedler condemned for selling without a license. “His act of selling is morally justifiable, and forbidding him to sell without a license is morally unjustifiable—is an interference with his due liberty which is ethically unwarranted.”
The remainder of Part II. of the “Principles of Ethics” is occupied with data cited to show that the amount of internal aggression, of revenge and robbery, is greater among peoples much occupied with external aggression, and that these decrease, while justice, generosity (which Mr. Spencer defines as having a double root, in the philoprogenitive instinct and the relatively modern feeling of sympathy), humanity (including kindness, pity, mercy), filial obedience, and industry, increase as more peaceful habits are reached. A greater veracity is also indirectly the result of this evolution, since a coercive internal structure of society is connected with external enmity, and such coercive structure is unfavorable to veracity. Chastity also increases with the social evolution, though it does not necessarily characterize societies of the non-militant type. Its increase is connected with the growth of the higher moral and æsthetic feelings; romantic love plays a predominant part in our art. Intemperance, as causing, indirectly, social evil by a lowering of social efficiency, must, in like manner, decrease with social advancement.
In summing up his inductions, Spencer says: “Though, as shown in my first work, ‘Social Statics,’ I once espoused the doctrine of the intuitive moralists,... yet it has gradually become clear to me that the qualifications required practically obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them. It has become clear to me that if, among ourselves, the current belief is that a man who robs and does not repent will be eternally damned, while an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that ‘God will not favor a man who does not steal and rob’; it is impossible to hold that men have in common an innate perception of right and wrong.
“But now, while we are shown that the moral sense doctrine in its original form is not true, we are also shown that it adumbrates a truth, and a much higher truth. For the facts cited... unite in proving that the sentiments and ideas current in each society become adjusted to the kinds of activity predominating in it.... If the life of internal amity continues unbroken from generation to generation, there must result not only the appropriate code, but the appropriate emotional nature.... Men so conditioned will acquire, to the degree needful for complete guidance, that innate conscience which intuitive moralists erroneously suppose to be possessed by mankind at large. There needs but a continuance of absolute peace externally, and a rigorous insistance on non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men into a form naturally characterized by all the virtues.” Complete exemption from war has already been attained by some few isolated peoples. “May we not reasonably infer that the state reached by these small uncultured tribes may be reached by the great cultured nations, when the life of internal amity shall be unqualified by the life of external enmity?”
Part III. of the “Principles of Ethics” is occupied with practical considerations concerning “The Ethics of Individual Life,” under the headings “Activity,” “Rest,” “Nutrition,” “Stimulation,” “Culture,” “Amusements,” “Marriage,” “Parenthood.” Of the general ethical relation of the individual to society, Spencer says:—“Integration being the primary process of evolution, we may expect that the aggregate of conceptions constituting ethics enlarges at the same time that its components acquire heterogeneity, definiteness, and that kind of cohesion which system gives to them. As fulfilling this expectation, we may first note that while drawing within its range of judgment numerous actions of men towards one another which at first were not recognized as right or wrong, it finally takes into its sphere the various divisions of private conduct—those actions of each individual which directly concern himself only, and in but remote ways concern his fellows.”
Ethics has been commonly regarded as merely a system of interdicts on certain kinds of acts which men would like to do and of injunctions to perform certain acts which they would like not to do. It says nothing about the great mass of acts constituting normal life, though these have their ethical aspect. The pleasurable has been too often regarded as outside the legitimate sphere of ethical approval, where not directly the rightful subject of ethical disapproval. But pleasure is an accompaniment of vitality, and furthers the vital activities; and if the general happiness is to be the aim of action, then the happiness of each unit is a fit aim; and there is unquestionably “a division of ethics which yields sanction to all the normal actions of individual life, while it forbids the abnormal ones.” There is an altruistic as well as an egoistic justification of the care for self, since the health of descendants and the ability to provide for offspring is directly concerned; and since such care is needful to exclude the risk of becoming a burden to others. And there is a further positive justification of egoism which results from the obligation to expend some effort for others, and to become, as far as possible, a source of social pleasure to others.
It will be seen, from the above analysis, that the chapter appended to Part I. still speaks of an ultimate state of complete adjustment to social life52; this chapter was, however, published from the original MS. without alteration. Some passages in Part II. seem to involve the same idea of a possible complete attainment of the ethical end,53 but Part III. closes with reference to “an approximately complete adjustment of the nature to the life which has to be led.”
Footnotes
38 Spencer elsewhere says “due exercise,” vide p. 76.
39 Essay on “Morals and Moral Sentiment.”
40 P. 105.
41 Vide “Principles of Psychology.”
42 P. 104.
43 Pp. 104,105.
44 Pp. 108, 109.
45 Pp. 134, 148.
46 P. 147.
47 Pp. 202, 203.
48 P. 231.
49 See pp. 71, 193.
50 Pp. 258, 259.
51 As the “revision” of the theoretical part of this book chiefly consists, like its abridgment, in the elimination of the references to Divine Will and other earlier views held before acquaintance with Darwin’s theory of life, there is nothing in the book, in distinction from Mr. Spencer’s other later works, that needs especially to be considered here.
52 See, for instance, supra, p. 70.
53 See supra, p. 75.
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