Herbert Spencer 1 5 7 



' I will only further say that freedom of the will, did it exist, 

 would be at variance with the beneficent necessity displayed in the 

 evolution of the correspondence between the organism and the en- 

 vironment. . . . Were the inner relations partly determined by 

 some other agency, the harmony at any moment existing would be 

 disturbed, and the advance to a higher harmony impeded. There 

 would be a retardation of that grand progress which is bearing 

 Humanity onwards to a higher intelligence and a nobler character.' ^ 



In blaming Mr. Spencer for this passage, we should 

 protest against being charged with the absurdity of denying 

 merit and beauty to spontaneous acts of voluntary adhesion 

 to good. Such acts may be highly "meritorious, and at the 

 same time eminently free. All we mean is that for an act 

 to be ' moral,' the doer of it must directly or indirectly be 

 moved by the idea of 'right' present to his mind then or 

 antecedently, so as to have become mentally habitual.^ Such 

 habitual actions may be eminently ' free,' since freedom con- 

 sists in the unhindered power of following the dictates of 

 intelligence concerning what is best and most desirable. In 

 proportion as less worthy motives have more power over us, 

 just so far are we less free. 



It would be a superfluous task here to expatiate upon the 

 defective morality of a philosophy which denies to man's 

 will any more power of choice than a fragment of paper 

 thrown into a furnace has a choice concerning its ignition. 

 But Mr. Spencer's moral system is even yet more profoundly 

 defective, as it denies any objective distinction between right 

 and wrong in any being, whether men are or are not re- 

 sponsible for their actions. According to our author, the 

 laws of Nature are ultimately reducible to one force not 

 necessarily moral, and therefore all laws and all actions must 

 be, in ultimate analysis, equally moral or equally immoral. 

 Every action whatever is, according to him, a mode of the 

 Unknowable, and the stab of the assassin and the traffic of 



^ Psychology, vol. ii. p. 503. ^ gee ante, pp. 49 and 96. 



