90 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



in this department of the system, the supreme law is 

 not "Be complex," but " Get pleasure," or, in its noblest 

 form, " Give pleasure," but in the form which best repro- 

 duces the meaning of the doctrine of balance, " Promote 

 maximum pleasure." This psychological test of the 

 good overrides and controls all the other tests with 

 which it is associated in the Data of Ethics physical, 

 biological, sociological. Spencer himself bears witness 

 to this fact to the supremacy in his thinking of a 

 psychological test ; nor have any reason to challenge or 

 complain of it. By all means let the moral consciousness 

 speak ; and let it be a supreme, if not a solitary, guide ; 

 but are we sure that this hedonistic doctrine is the 

 authentic and final utterance of the moral consciousness ? 

 Is complexity which in Spencer's thinking stands for 

 moral and intellectual progress really to yield its place 

 of supremacy to compromise or balance, if the latter 

 secures maximum pleasure all round ? 



The third ideal dominates Spencer's formulated 

 sociological doctrine. Here he is the out - and - out 

 champion of individualism. His sociological lawgiving 

 distils down into a single old phrase, laissez faire. Of 

 course so acute and systematic a thinker betrays the 

 same bias in his ethical writings as in his sociology. He 

 is a thorough individualist in his emphasis upon 

 justice, with its indefinite appendixes in favour of 

 negative and positive beneficence. Both as moralist and 

 as sociologist, Spencer is full of the thought of individual 

 rights : in curious contrast with previous utilitarian 

 writers, and in curious sympathy with intuitionalism. 

 This doctrine of rights constitutes, in fact, one of the 

 most genuine and most important among the vanishing 

 traces of intuitionalism in Spencer's thinking. Still it 

 seems fair to say that when he handles ethics technic- 



