I 



Herbert Spencer 155 



place the process of Evolution, as understood by Mr. Spencer, 

 compels him to be at one with Mr. Darwin in his denial of 

 the existence of any fundamental and essential distinction 

 between Duty and Pleasure. Virtuous lives are represented 

 as mere results of the continuation of that same process 

 which has produced the association of wolves in packs or 

 hornets in a nest. Brutal passions — the desire to pursue and 

 prey upon a victim or to escape such pursuit, or the gross 

 appetite of sex, are given to us as the ultimate components 

 at once of our loftiest aspirations and of our tenderest feelings 

 — of the most refined human affection and of our sense of 

 awe at the Divine Majesty itself. We yield with much 

 reluctance to the necessity of affirming that Mr. Spencer 

 gives no evidence of ever having acquired a knowledge of the 

 meaning of the term ' morahty,' according to the true sense 

 of the Avord. Nevertheless this defect, on his part, ought not 

 to surprise our readers, since ' Virtue ' and ' Goodness ' are 

 words which can have no rational or logical place in the 

 vocabulary of any one who accepts Mr. Spencer's views. This 

 is the case, since he explicitly and utterly denies every ele- 

 ment of freedom to the human will — a fatal but necessary 

 consequence of his denial of the persistent and substantial 

 Ego. He says : — ^ 



' Considered as an internal perception, the illusion ' [of human 

 freedom] ' consists in supposinglthat at each moment the ego is some- 

 thing more than the aggregate of feelings and ideas actual and 

 nascent, which then exists. . . . This composite psychical state 

 which excites the action, is at the same time the ego which is said 

 to will the action. Naturally enough, then, the subject of such 

 psychical changes says that he wills the action ; since, psychically 

 considered, he is at that moment nothing more than the composite 

 state of consciousness by which the action is excited. But to say that 

 the performance of the action is, therefore, the result of his free will, 

 is to say that he determines the cohesions of the psychical states 

 1 Psychology y vol. i. p. 500. 



