A VINDICATION OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS. 327 



development of moral feeling ? What can mere consciousness apart 

 from knowledge derived from external sources tell us of our bodily 

 constitution and development ? It is occupied almost solely with sen- 

 sations of pleasure and pain ; it knows what are proximate causes of 

 one or the other; but what the laws are that rule the human organiza- 

 tion it is wholly ignorant. We have absolutely no consciousness of 

 the nature of digestion or respiration ; we only know in a rough way 

 what creates disturbances in one region or the other, and what pro- 

 motes comfort. Is it likely that we shall know any better from a sim- 

 ple questioning of our individual consciousness how our actions are 

 produced, or what is their essential character and true significance ? 

 It seems to me that the feelings accompanying moral action are no 

 safer guides to a true understanding of that action than the feelings 

 accompanying digestion are to a true understanding of digestion. 

 The objective method of study, as applied to human conduct, has this 

 great advantage, that, while looking at things from the outside, and 

 grasping the enchainement of cause and effect through all past time, 

 it can also take account of the direct revelations of consciousness, so 

 far as these seem to furnish any safe guidance. Mr. Spencer, it may 

 be presumed, knows something personally of the inner life of human- 

 ity. He has written this treatise in full view of all that his personal 

 experience has taught him of the motives by which men are swayed, 

 and we must suppose that, in his mind at least, there is no contradic- 

 tion between his philosophical theories and the teachings of life or the 

 affirmations of consciousness. It is well to bear in mind that philoso- 

 phers after all are men first and philosophers only afterward. 



The adverse criticisms that have been offered upon Mr. Spencer's 

 last work may be said to resolve themselves into two leading objections: 

 first, that he does away with the essential distinction between right 

 and wrong ; and, second, that, for regulative purposes, his system is 

 wholly unadapted to human wants. I propose to consider these points 

 separately. 



Let us, in the first place, try to understand clearly what Mr. Spen- 

 cer's view is. Looking at conduct objectively he sees, as we advance 

 from lower to higher forms in nature, an ever-increasing and improv- 

 ing adaptation, first to the preservation of individual life, and next to 

 the preservation of the life of progeny. The lowest creatures in the 

 animal kingdom possess little or no power of self -protection, and are 

 therefore, broadly speaking, wholly at the mercy of their environment. 

 With greater complexity of structure comes greater power of providing 

 for wants and averting dangers ; while the interests of the progeny 

 become more and more a care to the parent animals. The time comes, 

 in process of evolution, when the individual acquires the power of 

 choice between opposite courses of action. One sense may prompt to 

 a certain line of action, and another to a different one. Smell, for 

 example, may attract to food, but sight may reveal an enemy of supe- 



