766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wrong. But we can easily see how, in both cases, the philosophy of 

 the " Data of Ethics " breaks down. It finds itself involved in a hope- 

 lessly bewildering calculation of the relative amounts of pleasure and 

 pain attending either line of conduct in its bearing on the sensation 

 of the agent and of other people. Whether any other philosophy 

 capable of distinct statement holds good is, of course, a different ques- 

 tion, as we bear in mind throughout. 



By the very method of his inquiry the author of the "Data of 

 Ethics " is cut off from any appeal to human morality as essentially 

 distinct from that of other animals. He is committed to the position 

 that the conduct and ethics of man are merely an evolution of those 

 of the mollusks. When he takes a woman suckling her child as his 

 highest type of a right action, it is difficult to see why he might not as 

 well have taken any other mammal. The sentence would run just as 

 well, " Consider the relation of a healthy cow to a healthy calf. Be- 

 tween the two there exists a mutual dependence which is a source of 

 pleasure to both. In yielding its natural food to the calf, the cow 

 receives gratification, and to the calf there comes the satisfaction of 

 appetite a satisfaction which accompanies furtherance of life, growth, 

 and increasing enjoyment." There is a caveat, as was said, to be 

 entered against " higher " and " lower," applied to the earlier and later 

 products of evolution ; they carry with them the suggestion of a 

 moral difference which might form a foundation for ethics. But, if 

 the evolutionist were asked why the latter and more complex was 

 higher than the earlier and simpler organism, we apprehend his only 

 answer would be, that it was higher because it was later and more 

 complex. If the pleasures of the other animals are less intense so are 

 their pains, and from a large class of the pains which beset humanity 

 they are altogether free. A sea-gull lives, it is said, longer than a 

 man : it has found a sphere in which it has few enemies ; it knows no 

 care for the morrow, no moral effort, no moral conflict, no strivings 

 after an unattainable ideal. At least it gives no sign of anything of 

 the kind. Why is it to be dubbed lower ? 



Besides the list of pleasures denoting the conduciveness of the 

 action to vitality, there may be said to be in the " Data of Ethics " a 

 set of characteristics derived from perfection of evolution. Such are 

 "adjustment of an action to an end," " definiteness," "exactness," 

 " heterogeneity," " complexity," " multiformity/' subordination of im- 

 mediate to remote objects and of motives connected with presentative 

 to those connected with representative and re -representative sensa- 

 tions, all regarded as placing the highest mammal at the top of the 

 ascending scale ; while the mollusks, with whose rudimentary ethics 

 Mr. Spencer sets out, are at the lowest. Such, also, are the criteria 

 stated in the terms of Mr. Spencer's special and, to common minds, 

 mysterious theory of the movement of evolution, his " rhythms," and 

 his perfect state of "moving equilibrium." Mr. Spencer, as he has 



