200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of individuals will be the object. Individual happiness has the last 

 word. 



In the " System of Synthetic Philosophy," evolution is the univer- 

 sal world-law, the law of laws, dispensing with all need of stern com- 

 mandments of revealed religion and theological morality. The evo- 

 lution of human nature and society brings with itself this, that human 

 conduct becomes better and better adapted to individual and social 

 aims ; that good conduct (adapted to the preservation of the race) 

 gradually overpowers bad conduct (unadapted to self and race main- 

 tenance) in that struggle for existence in which morality and virtue 

 have on their side every advantage. As the fitter organism survives 

 the less fit, so must moral conduct in the natural course of things 

 gain the upper hand, and immoral conduct tend more and more to- 

 ward extinction. Thus, according to immutable laws, higher forms 

 of conduct must be evolved from the original conduct of man in his 

 lower estate, as higher organisms are evolved from lower. Changes 

 such as have taken place in the course of civilization will take place 

 again. The want of faith in a further like development, whereby 

 man's nature will be brought into harmony with his condition, is only 

 one of the innumerable proofs of an inadequate knowledge of causal- 

 ity ; and he who has learned to put aside primitive dogmas and primi- 

 tive ways of looking at things, and who has appropriated those modes 

 of thought which science produces, can not believe that the " whole- 

 some working Force " which has hitherto so changed all forms of life 

 according to the altered requirements of their being, will not continue 

 to operate in the same direction. 



Ethical evolution affords an imposing outlook for the future of 

 mankind. Man does not waver, like Hercules, between virtue and 

 happiness. He is spared all pain of choice. Virtue and happiness are 

 the one inseparable goal which he approaches with steady advance. 

 Nature herself leads him on, and he has in his own nature the assur- 

 ance of victory. Ceaselessly bent upon his own advancement, rest- 

 lessly at work improving the conditions of his existence, he at the 

 same time nourishes his moral life. No moral law opposes the im- 

 pulses to this advance. No antinomy between moral and natural law 

 needs solution, no strife between moral and sensual impulses need be 

 decided. Always and everywhere an aspiration, a goal. No subjec- 

 tion of the ego to a law which commands without regard to weal or 

 woe, no sacrifice of individual claims, no giving up of self at the bid- 

 ding of an absolute moral law. Development is never interrupted. 

 In ceaseless progress it approaches the goal the greatest sum of well- 

 being. The rigoristic " Thou canst, for thou oughtst," has no place 

 here. Guidance is enough, compulsion is not needed. 



This ethics is confessedly utilitarian, before all things a higher 

 form of utilitarianism ; but no raw materialist philosophy of useful- 

 ness, addressing itself to brutal egoism, to sensual enjoyment, to the 



