BAIN ON THE DATA OF ETHICS. 



217 



made perfectly definite, it would necessarily go a far way toward set- 

 tling the social ethics, which is made up of individual interests, and 

 has for its function the balancing of each against the rest. The first 

 division of social ethics is Justice, which is the prime condition of co- 

 operation. The final division is Beneficence, negative and positive, 

 involving all those nice adjustments of egoism and altruism previously 

 commented on. 



While there are many questions of great interest propounded for 

 debate in this highly original work, I must be content with adverting 

 to what I gather to be the author's main position — the displacing of 

 utilitarian calculation or empirical Hedonism by an ethics of evolution. 

 Not that the acceptance of the evolution hypothesis is an essential pre- 

 liminary ; if it were so, a great many people would at once refuse a 

 hearing to the whole speculation. The relationship of the physical 

 and mental, taken as a matter of fact, is in reality the chief corner- 

 stone of the whole ei-ection. 



Mr. Sidgwick, after stating the difficulties attending an empirical 

 Hedonism, as a means of investigating right and wrong, examined the 

 various alternative methods " of determining what conduct will be 

 attended with the greatest excess of pleasure and pain, so as to dis- 

 pense with the continual reference to empirical results, which it has 

 been found so difficult to estimate with accuracy." In book ii., chap- 

 ter vi., of his " Methods of Ethics," he took up Mr. Spencer's views as 

 propounded in " Social Statics." To this chapter Mr. Spencer ex- 

 pressly replies in his " Criticisms and Explanations." The real reply, 

 however, is the entire volume. We must peruse and assimilate the 

 whole, before giving an opinion on the question as between evolution 

 and empirical Hedonism. I had occasion to remark, in noticing Mr. 

 Sidgwick's work ("Mind," vol. i., p. 185), that the Hedonic or utilita- 

 rian calculation admits of being helped out by a variety of devices 

 such as to mitigate the apparent hopelessness of the problem. Every 

 suggestion of this nature should be welcomed and made the most of. 

 Now Mr. Spencer recasts the mode of propounding the problem, with- 

 out altering its essential character as an inquiry into the best means of 

 attaining happiness. But he does more than this. He provides cer- 

 tain new lights that were not possessed by the earliest theorists on the 

 side of utility. 



The comparison Avith empirical Hedonism is best taken in the per- 

 sonal ethics. It is admitted that a code of personal conduct can never 

 be made entirely definite. " But ethical requirements may here be to 

 such extent affiliated upon physical necessities as to give them a par- 

 tially scientific authority. It is clear that between the expenditure of 

 bodily substance in vital activities, and the taking in of materials 

 from which this substance may be renewed, there is a direct relation. 

 It is clear, too, that there is a direct relation between the wasting of 



