HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 451 



damental connecting link is to be found between the work in its 

 totality and the other divisions of the Synthetic Philosophy. 



One large aspect of universal evolution remains to be con- 

 sidered before the organization of knowledge demanded by phi- 

 losophy can be taken as complete ; and this aspect of such 

 importance as to lead Mr. Spencer to describe all other parts of 

 his work as subsidiary to its interpretation * we at length reach 

 in the concluding two volumes of the series comprising The 

 Principles of Ethics. To the student of the earlier divisions of 

 the Spencerian system the point of view adopted in the elucida- 

 tion of the facts and problems of conduct will appear a matter 

 of course. Ethics necessarily depends upon the simpler sciences, 

 and generalizations furnished by these must be accepted as data 

 for the systematization of the principles of right living. More- 

 over, conduct at large, including those portions of it which form 

 the subject-matter of morality, can be fully understood only 

 when regarded as one phase of evolving life. This conception of 

 things will now seem so natural as to call for nothing beyond the 

 baldest statement. 



In his work of reconstructing ethical theory along the lines 

 thus indicated, and in harmony with the fundamental doctrines 

 of his philosophy, Mr. Spencer takes a great and most important 

 step in advance of the results reached by the various schools of 

 scientific moralists in the past. His system is, of course, hedo- 

 nistic or utilitarian that is, the final criterion and ultimate end 

 of conduct is for him happiness, pleasure, or well-being. But he 

 was naturally discontent with the merely empirical conclusions 

 in which the older utilitarians had been willing to rest. They 

 had not pushed beyond the inductive stage of inquiry ; and their 

 generalizations, however interesting and valuable they might be, 

 were merely generalizations after all statements founded simply 

 upon accumulated observations of results. But, though every 

 science begins with such observations and generalizations, it has 

 no claim to be considered a developed science until the principle 

 of causation is fully recognized and inductive results are set 

 forth in deductive form. It is the scientific presentation of 

 ethical principles, in this strict sense of the word scientific, that 

 Mr. Spencer has, therefore, undertaken. He has sought to con- 

 vert the laws of conduct from truths of the empirical into truths 

 of the rational order. As he wrote in his letter to Mill : f " I con- 

 ceive 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 



* See original preface to The Data of Ethics (18*79). 

 ) Repriuted in The Principles of Ethics, 21. 



