MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON "THE DATA OF ETHICS." 153 



we can understand why the murderer should he wretched amid his 

 wealth ? 



We must not, however, forget that Mr. Smith supposes the mur- 

 derer to he able to natter himself that he has probably caused more 

 happiness than unhappiness by his crime, Such a supposition might 

 perhaps embarrass a utilitarian of the old school, but hardly an adher- 

 ent of the "rational utilitarianism" taught by Mr. Spencer. Crude 

 utilitarianism assumes that an action can only be judged by the conse- 

 quences which directly and visibly flow from it ; rational utilitarianism 

 says that the criterion of an action is some rule of conduct established 

 by experience. The crude utilitarian is like a man who would discard 

 or ignore the multiplication-table, and insist on doing all sums involv- 

 ing multiplication by addition ; or who should insist on working out, 

 by tedious and uncertain arithmetical processes, problems which could 

 be solved with the far greater ease and certainly by algebra. Experi- 

 ence shows what lines of conduct, what principles of action, are favor- 

 able to happiness in general, and to the satisfaction of the instinct of 

 sympathy in particular ; and human civilization can not be carried 

 very far before the principle is established that harm must come from 

 the shedding of human blood. Such a principle gains authority over 

 men's minds ; and, when an action is done that conflicts with it, it is 

 in vain that the perpetrator tries, by a fresh calculation of all the sup- 

 posed elements of the case, to show that his particular crime may be 

 all right. 



3. We are probably now prepared to estimate the force of the next 

 objection urged by Mr. Smith against evolutionary ethics, that they do 

 away with the idea of the "indefeasible sacredness of human life." 

 They would no doubt do away with any surplusage of mere sentiment 

 on the subject ; but, seeing that the first moral principle which emerges, 

 from the evolutionary point of view, is equity, and seeing that life is 

 what every man holds most dear, it is very hard to understand why a 

 system, which may be said simply to rationalize the Golden Rule, 

 should lead men to deal less carefully with human life than the sys- 

 tems of the past. What light does history shed upon the question ? 

 In what estimation was human life or human suffering held in the 

 ages of faith ? It was surely in a pre-e volution period that a man 

 could be hanged in England for stealing a sheep. Such things can not 

 be done to-day. Why ? Is it we should like a candid answer to the 

 question because there is a deeper impression than formerly that man 

 is made in the image of God ; or because the sentiment of justice has 

 grown stronger, and men have learned to sympathize more with one 

 another ? 



4. Finally, we are told that Mr. Spencer, being an evolutionist, 

 must be a necessarian, and that, as such, it is not open to him to con- 

 demn any act as wrong, seeing that the doer of the act could plead that 

 his conduct was just what the point he had reached in evolution ren- 



