MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON "THE DATA OF ETHICS:' 147 



than by an inquiry into the results likely to flow from it in a special 

 case. Moral actions, in general, are those favorable to life, not only 

 to its preservation, but to its improvement ; immoral actions are those 

 which tend to the shortening or to the impoverishing of life. In 

 speaking of life here, we speak not only of the condition of animation, 

 but of all that successive experiences, successive enlargements of the 

 range of thought, action, and sympathy, have built into, or worked 

 into, the human consciousness. To help forward this work of integra- 

 tion is good ; to retard or counteract it is evil. In common speech the 

 terms good and evil are upon the whole applied to actions just in ac- 

 cordance as they tend, or are believed to tend, in one or other of these 

 directions. 



As the aim of all voluntary action is the furtherance of happiness, 

 the test of perfection in an action will be its fully acconrplishing that 

 object. A man who procures a momentary gratification by some un- 

 wholesome indulgence has not performed, even from a selfish point 

 of view, a perfect action, seeing that its effects are partly, at least, 

 destructive of the end he has in view. The man who, losing his tem- 

 per, quarrels with a neighbor, does not, even from a selfish point of 

 view, perform a perfect action ; for, whatever satisfaction he may 

 derive at the moment from the utterance of angry words, he can de- 

 rive no benefit, but only the reverse, from the subsequent alienation of 

 his neighbor's feelings. From a social point of view, no action is per- 

 fect which benefits only the actor, or which benefits some one else at 

 the actor's expense. Self-sacrifice may be ethically noble ; but that 

 any necessity for it should arise implies some defect in the conditions 

 of existence, and therefore of action. If it enables us, on the one 

 hand, to estimate the moral resources of humanity, it points, on the 

 other, to evils which it behooves us to remedy ; for why, we ask, 

 should the gain of one be purchased by the loss of another ? To find 

 a perfect action, therefore, we must look for one all the effects of 

 which, so far as they can be traced, are good, which not only involves 

 no sacrifice of happiness, either to the actor or to the person who is 

 the object of the action, but which is equally beneficial to both. So- 

 cial evolution being a manifestly unfinished process, the region of the 

 social activities can not be expected to furnish the best examples of 

 perfect adjustment. In searching for such an example, Mr. Spencer 

 therefore falls back, in the first place, on the physical region, and cites 

 to Mr. Smith's great amusement and scorn the case of a mother 

 suckling her child. We quote his words : 



Consider the relation of a healthy mother to a healthy infant. Between the 

 two there exists a mutual dependence which is a source of pleasure to both. In 

 yielding its natural food to the child, the mother receives gratification ; and to 

 the child there comes the satisfaction of appetite a satisfaction which accom- 

 panies furtherance of life, growth, and enjoyment. Let the relation be sus- 

 pended, and on both sides there is suffering. The mother experiences both 



