io8 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



all it is that between morality and selfishness, social 

 tissue and personal organisms, society and individuals 

 a dreary conflict, to which there seems no discernible 

 limit on the farthest horizon. 



Finally, how does he differ from Utilitarianism ? 

 There is one very important practical difference. The 

 Utilitarian, as a moralist or spiritual director, defines 

 right and wrong, and urges men to define right and 

 wrong, by a computation of visible results, in the light 

 of the present tastes and faculties of living men. Mr. 

 Stephen on the other hand, when he speaks as an ex- 

 pert upon moral points as a consulting moral physician, 

 or the giver of " counsel's opinions " in morals, Mr. 

 Stephen remembers what evolutionism has taught him, 

 that the race has changed and is changing. Therefore 

 he keeps in mind the probability that results, which 

 we think highly advantageous, may be judged very 

 differently by a future society when it measures them 

 by its new standards and altered tastes. And therefore 

 Mr. Stephen appeals to recognised moral duties and 

 maxims as guides to social welfare. He distrusts the 

 most acute calculation of the consequences which we 

 can foresee. Morality has been evolved on the lines 

 of social advance, and points us on to the true line of 

 further progress. Not pleasure, but health or vitality, 

 is to be our test. Now this is good and wholesome 

 teaching, far better than hedonism, however universal - 

 istic. But with Mr. Stephen this is all a technical thing. 

 He speaks thus as a moralist to moral minds. But, when 

 he speaks as a man to individual men, there is instantly 

 a relapse into hedonism, and that of the selfish sort. 

 Granted the moral judgment given a soul devoted to 

 the social weal Mr. Stephen offers vigorous and pointed 

 encouragement, and dissuades one from being argued 



