198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but laws of the " ought " ; not laws of conduct in general, hut of con- 

 duct of a certain kind. As logic establishes the regulative laws and 

 postulates of scientific knowledge, ethics establishes the regulative 

 principles of moral life. 



The stand-point assumed by the author, in dealing with evolution, 

 serves also in ethics. It appears to him evident that, from indifferent 

 actions to actions which are good or bad, the transition is quite grad- 

 ual. In ethics, as in evolution, the higher development must be ex- 

 plained by the lower. The study of ethical problems presupposes the 

 study of human action as a whole, and this again presupposes that of 

 the actions of living beings in general. The study of the evolution of 

 action forms the preparation for ethics. 



It is shown, in the first place, that " higher organic development 

 is accompanied by more highly developed action." The latter is 

 "an improving adjustment of actions to ends, such as furthers the 

 prolongation of life, such as furthers an increased amount of life." 

 Action adapts itself more and more to self and race maintenance ; and 

 here also the general evolutionary principle is applicable. " Race- 

 maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, arises gradually 

 out of that which can not be called conduct ; adjusted actions are 

 preceded by unadjusted ones." 



In treating of good and bad conduct, Herbert Spencer, in the first 

 place, endeavors to establish the meaning of the terms " good " and 

 "bad." Actions properly adapted to ends are good, and actions not 

 so adapted are evil, both these definitions being taken in a relative 

 sense only. Good conduct is identical with the most highly devel- 

 oped conduct, which " simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of 

 life in self, in offspring, and in our fellow-men." 



Pessimistic verdicts upon the value of life are combated by the 

 author with all the might of his intellect, as standing in harsh contra- 

 diction to every paragraph of the unwritten moral code of humanity. 

 He leans toward a limited optimism. He rightly urges that pessi- 

 mists and optimists agree on one point. Both "assume it to be self- 

 evident that life is good or bad according as it does, or does not, 

 bring a surplus of agreeable feeling. . . . Each makes the kind of 

 sentiency which accompanies life the test." 



A general consideration of the conflicting views of life brings the 

 author to the conclusion that the good, on the whole, is that which 

 causes pleasure ; that our ideas of good and evil arise from the cer- 

 tainty or probability that the same will call forth, somewhere or some 

 time, pleasure or suffering. 



Not man as an individual, independent of social relations, of family, 

 people, state, society ; not man or humanity in the abstract ; but man 

 in society, the social individual, the member of the social union, is the 

 subject for whose moral action, for the adaptations of whose conduct 

 to the highest aims of social life, it is the business of scientific ethics 



