A VINDICATION OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS. 325 



I am far from saying that it tells us everything we might wish to know 

 in regard to the springs of conduct, or the special sources of moral 

 energy ; but I contend that it tells us much that is of supreme impor- 

 tance, and that anything we may require to add to the statements it 

 contains will not be found in conflict with the writer's main posi- 

 tions. 



Mr. Spencer, it must be understood, undertakes to trace for us the 

 evolution of morality as an objective process. Morality, like every- 

 thing else, must have a history. What is that history ? This is the 

 question to which Mr. Spencer addresses himself. If we can trace the 

 development of morality in the past, we shall be better able to under- 

 stand its characteristics in the present, and its probable course in the 

 future. Mr. Spencer says truly that morality is a certain aspect of 

 conduct in general ; it is, as he holds, developed conduct ; and, in order 

 that we may understand what conduct is, he asks us to examine it in 

 its earliest manifestations, and to follow it through the ages, as it gains 

 in definiteness, in conrplexity, in range, and in the importance of its 

 reactions upon consciousness. This is a view, the legitimacy of which 

 it seems impossible to dispute. When our attention is arrested by 

 any structure in nature, we very properly ask : " How has it come to 

 be what it is ? Did it spring into existence at once, in the form un- 

 der which we behold it now, or was it shaped by slow degrees ? If the 

 latter, what were the stages through w hich it successively passed ? " 

 Do not tell us that the same questions can not profitably be asked in 

 regard to morality until the questions have been fairly put and an- 

 swered according to the best obtainable knowledge. 



The great objection hitherto made to the scientific study of history, 

 or of any moral subject, has been that all calculations based upon gen- 

 eral laws of growth or progress are liable at any moment to be thrown 

 into confusion by the appearance upon the scene of forces or of influ- 

 ences of a wholly exceptional character. Thus the birth of some man 

 of transcendent abilities may alter, it is said, the whole course of a 

 nation's history. The answer to this objection is twofold : first, that 

 the great man or hero is himself a product of antecedent conditions, 

 and is born into a society more or less fitted to feel and submit to his 

 influence ; secondly, that the effects wrought by exceptional characters 

 are but exceptional, and that the great stream of human development 

 follows its course but little affected by accidents here or there. Mr. 

 Spencer, therefore, and those who think with him, may, without in the 

 least compromising their system, make large admissions as to the 

 influence of certain special agencies. They do not necessarily blind 

 themselves to the course of history in the ordinary sense of the word, 

 because they make a special study of the development of conduct. The 

 line of observation and argument pursued in the " Data of Ethics " is 

 hopelessly antagonistic only to that form of supernaturalism which 

 disbelieves totally in evolution, preferring to regard human history as 



