212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



both optimist and pessimist must assume that life is satisfactory or 

 otherwise, according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agree- 

 able feeling. He disposes of the ascetic theory as being the product 

 of the inferior religious creeds ; and in so far as any persons in the 

 present day retain the ascetic view, he runs them into absurdity by 

 asking what they mean by the virtue of administering to a sick per- 

 son ; is it to increase the pains of illness ? He then reviews the ethical 

 end expressed by " perfecting " one's nature, and shows that there is 

 no other test of perfection than " complete power of all the organs to 

 fulfill their respective functions." Then as to making " virtue " the 

 standard, he criticises Aristotle and Plato, and finds that they are 

 playing off juggles of language. He next argues that virtue could not 

 be upheld as virtue unless on the supposition that it is pleasurable in 

 its total effects. Again as to the " intuitional " theory, he shows that 

 the holders can not, and do not, ignore the ultimate derivations of 

 right and wrong from pleasure and pain. He admits, however, that 

 there is still among us a survival of the devil-worship of the savage, 

 seen in our delight in contemplating the exercise of despotic power — 

 the worship that owns Carlyle as its prophet, disguising itself by de- 

 nouncing happiness as pig-philosoi^hy, and substituting " blessedness " 

 as the end. So much for good and bad conduct. 



In a new chapter, the author pursues the criticism of the ethical 

 theories, under the title, " Ways of judging Conduct." As a prelimi- 

 nary remark, he shows us with what exceeding slowness the idea of 

 causation has been evolved. He is struck with the fact that all the 

 theories — theological, political, intuitional, utilitarian — are character- 

 ized either by the entire absence of the idea of causation, or by an in- 

 adequate presence of it. Thus the theory of the " will of God " origi- 

 nates with the savage whose only restraint besides fear of his fellow 

 men is fear of an ancestral spirit. Now, the notion that actions are 

 good or bad simply by divine injunction is tantamount to saying that 

 they have not in their own nature good or bad effects. After review- 

 ing Hobbes and the Intuitionists, he tells us that even the utility 

 school is very far from recognizing natural causation. In other words, 

 he enunciates his known principle, of which the present volume is the 

 expansion, that morality is not an induction from isolated facts, but a 

 deduction from the processes of life as carried on under established 

 conditions of existence. The proof of this principle needs a survey of 

 ethics under four aspects — Physical, Biological, Psychological, Socio- 

 logicah 



In the four chapters devoted to the survey, Mr. Spencer's ethical 

 foundations are laid. To begin with the Physical view. This treats 

 conduct as so much motion suited to its purposes by paying respect to 

 the law of conservation of force ; in which view the ethical progress 

 is progress to duly-proportioned conduct ; and that conduct is increas- 

 ingly coherent and definite, increasingly heterogeneous or varied, and 



