CHAP, x "SCIENCE OF ETHICS" 107 



makes it fall outside of morals. What is moral is not 

 personal, but social. What is personal is not moral, 

 but hedonistic. 



As compared with Spencer, Stephen also deals mainly 

 with one great harmonious process of evolution, though 

 with him it is purely biological either the maintenance 

 of health, or the fuller unfolding of life ; and he does 

 not trouble us with definitions in terms of matter and 

 motion, or with hymns of praise to complexity. 

 Spencer's second great ideal, that of balance between 

 egoism and altruism, is dismissed by Stephen as a 

 Utopian dream ; but he would dearly like to lay hold 

 of it, if he dared, for he is as much a hedonist as 

 Spencer; and, in the absence of perfect righteousness 

 even from Utopia, Mr. Stephen's whole moral world 

 lies at the mercy of chance. On Mr. Spencer's third 

 ideal, that of political and social laissez faire, Mr. 

 Stephen finds no occasion to express an opinion in his 

 own more purely ethical treatise. 



Next, if we contrast Mr. Stephen's positions with 

 those of Darwin, or rather with those suggested by 

 Darwin's views, and worked out later in their ethical 

 and social bearings by other writers, we observe an 

 almost entire absence of any doctrine of struggle for 

 existence. Evolution is accepted in the Darwinian 

 sense, but little or no reference is made to the Dar- 

 winian theory of the conditions of evolution. That 

 remains true even in regard to the few passages where 

 Mr. Stephen in a sense Darwinises, speaking not of 

 one human social tissue, but of diverse forms of tissue. 

 These various tissues may be thought of as competing 

 with each other, but are hardly recognised as struggling 

 for life, and as either dying out or else covering the 

 whole field. If Mr. Stephen has a struggle in view at 



