ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 373 



ence must be assured first of all things. Everything, therefore, that 

 is important for the most prolonged existence of the greatest number 

 is also important for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 

 The utilitarian will utilize all that the evolutionist can tell him and 

 one thing more. 



The evolutionist will tell him that there is a correlation, on one 

 side, between disagreeable and destructive, and on the other side be- 

 tween pleasurable and advantageous action ; that the "useful," in the 

 sense of the pleasurable, nearly agrees with the useful in the sense of 

 the life-maintaining ; and that there is a close connection between 

 health and happiness and between disease and unhappiness. While 

 this correlation is far from being perfect, it is, nevertheless, true that 

 a more certain road to happiness lies through maintaining or improv- 

 ing the health than through a direct striving after a maximum of pleas- 

 ure. The same rule prevails in society. The sound health of society 

 must be the practical end through reaching which alone the real pros- 

 perity of society can be attained. 



The truth that health is a fundamental condition of happiness has, 

 indeed, not been unknown to any ethicist ; that pattern of ancient 

 cheerfulness, the philosopher Epicurus, is an emphatic reminder of 

 this fact. And that the care of one's own health is enjoined also 

 through regard for others, and that the so-called duties toward one's 

 self are really duties toward others, and for that reason only duties, is 

 likewise a doctrine that did not have first to be learned from Darwin 

 and Spencer. But we have to thank Spencer for having adduced, in 

 his exposition of the facts of transmission, so potent evidence of this 

 truth, that no such dictum upon it as Schopenhauer has uttered will 

 ever again be possible. While, however, he has performed the service 

 of defining the physical conditions of happiness with greater emphasis 

 than any of his predecessors, it does not follow that the utilitarian 

 method founded by Bentham will have to be given up. Evolutionist 

 writers have reminded us that too little attention has been paid to 

 health in discipline and in public instruction. This is too true, but it 

 is not in consequence of the application of utilitarian but of non-utili- 

 tarian precepts. And if it has been declared to be one of the results 

 of the doctrine of a correlation between species-maintaining and pleas- 

 ure-bringing action that family happiness is the highest human happi- 

 ness, that is only a confirmation of a view expressed long ago by utili- 

 tarian ethicists, as appeared most plainly a hundred years ago (1785) 

 in Paley's " Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy." 



If, however, by the phrase, " health of society," something else is 

 understood than a society consisting of healthy individuals, then the 

 word " health " is only a metaphor, and one the sense of which is not 

 clear ; and to put this metaphor in the place of the principle of the 

 happiness of the whole can not be regarded as an improvement. If 

 Bentham should return now, he would have to censure the evolutionist 



