SCIENCE AND MORALITY. 771 



sis, is not absolutely impossible ; it may even be said that, tremendous 

 as the obstacles were, in a space of time very short compared with the 

 total duration of the race, an appreciable, if not a great, progress has 

 been made. At least, it will hardly be denied that in philanthropy the 

 world at the present day is more advanced than it was in the reign of 

 Tiberius. Of that, Mr. Spencer's own sentiments are proof enough. 

 In no ancient writer is there to be found a protest like his against the 

 oppression of the weaker races. But to get this sensible, warm motion 

 to lose itself in a mere generalization, whether the generalization be 

 humanity, animality which for all that we can see has just as good a 

 claim as humanity or simply evolution, and to be content with the 

 prospective welfare of this generalization instead of thinking about 

 its own, does seem to us absolutely impossible, unless it be in the case 

 of a very extraordinary temperament, or during the brief continuance 

 of an artificial mood. Besides, all ends sooner or later in a physical 

 catastrophe in the catastrophe, according to Mr. Spencer, of equili- 

 bration ; and how can it be expected that people will be animated to 

 moral effort by the idea that they are " co-operating with evolution in 

 producing the highest form of life," when evolution itself flings all the 

 results of so much differentiation and integration back into homoge- 

 neity with the recklessness of a child overturning its castle of sand ? 



There surely goes a good deal of quasi-religious faith to the making 

 of this evolutionary millennium. We have in effect to assume that all 

 the agencies of progress now at work will continue in full force, not- 

 withstanding the departure of the beliefs with which some of them 

 have been hitherto bound up, and that no new evils will emerge. Un- 

 happily, the last part of the assumption is contradicted by the evidence 

 alike of the sanitary, social, and political spheres. That physical Nat- 

 ure will become kinder to us there seems no reason to believe. The 

 author of the " Data of Ethics " does not promise that she will : he 

 says that flood, fire, and storm will always furnish occasions for the 

 display of heroism heroism which there will no longer be any very 

 tangible motive for displaying. On the progress of science we may 

 count ; and this is so important as to make us feel that humanity alto- 

 gether has at last struck into the right path. Yet, if we shut our ears 

 for a moment to the pseans which are being sung over telegraphs and 

 telephones, we become conscious that, while science has been making 

 miraculous strides, the masses have not yet made strides equally mirac- 

 ulous, either in character or in happiness. 



Mr. Spencer seems to expect unbounded improvement from the final 

 ascendency which he confidently anticipates of industry over war. He 

 is no doubt aware that the distinction between the military and the in- 

 dustrial types of society is familiar, though his use of it as a universal 

 key to history is new. There never can have been a purely military 

 state of society ; somebody must have produced, or there would have 

 been nothing for the warriors to pillage ; nor is the difference between 



