406 ETHICS 



the keystone of Spencer's ethics, and affords the chance of making 

 the theory of heredity applicable in a new field of ethical speculation. 



It is, as a matter of fact, impossible for the single individual to 

 calculate, by Bentham's receipt, all the consequences of pleasure or 

 of pain which result from the actions for his own welfare. The 

 individual need not, however, undertake this calculation at all. He 

 does not begin at the beginning of making his experiences in this 

 world; he enjoys the heaped-up treasure of experiences which, before 

 him, long-forgotten generations of ancestors had made; and the 

 sum of these experiences he calls his conscience. This voice of the 

 conscience restrains the individual from anti-social actions, which, 

 in accordance with experience, must lead to an injury to his own 

 person; in accordance, of course, with the experience not of single 

 ancestors but of the whole line. Here, again, a selective process in the 

 struggle for existence is being completed. Men with no conscience at 

 all or with an only imperfectly developed conscience have to contend 

 with disadvantages similar to those in whom the corporal adjustment 

 to the modern conditions of civilization have proved defective; they 

 are exterminated by seclusion in prison or by execution, as the others 

 by diseases which their bodies cannot resist. The criminal of to-day 

 might perhaps have been, in primitive times, a respected member of 

 his horde, perhaps, even a great chief. To-day he can be regarded 

 only as an atavistic survivor, who fits into our conditions as little 

 as a living ichthyosaurus into this lecture-hall. Again, it is to be 

 hoped, it is even definitely to be predicted, that many who to-day 

 are quite irreproachable in moral respects, in later times will no 

 longer succeed in satisfying the requirements in the form of their 

 grandson or great-grandson. For the progress is a biological necessity; 

 and he who cannot attach himself to its ways is submerged. 



It is small disparagement for this vast construction of the connec- 

 tion between the moral life of the individual and the total evolution 

 of the associations of men, of organisms, of the whole, that, now espe- 

 cially in English ethics, a bitter strife has broken forth, which we may 

 regard as the one-sided elaboration of the individualistic parts of 

 Spencer's ethics on the one side, of the social on the other side. 

 While the orthodox disciples of Spencer insist that such progress 

 only can be kept in aim which must assure to the individual, to the 

 fit the most unrestricted possible amount of free movement, while 

 the whole rigor of the process of selection must fall upon the unad- 

 justed and the unfit, the socialist tendencies of our time tend to 

 advocate a reversal of this harsh result and to advocate both the 

 united struggle of human society, by suppressing over-energetic 

 individuals, and the preservation of the economically weak. Though 

 it would be interesting to trace this division to its final grounds, I 

 must limit myself to note the fact that the socialist movement 



