FROM THE EVOLUTION PHILOSOPHY. 23 



judge, then, of what "happiness consists ? The difficulty 

 here presented is more apparent than real. There is no 

 necessity of trying to arrive at any consensus as to what 

 constitutes happiness. We must determine not the contents 

 of happiness, but the conditions to its attainment. What, 

 then, are these conditions ? Clearly, that each one of us 

 shall be perfectly free to do what he wills, and yet at the 

 same time be so constituted as not to want to do anything 

 that interferes with the full development of himself and of 

 others. It must be our voluntary desire to further the life 

 of ourselves and our fellow-man in every imaginable way, 

 and we must have reciprocally limited spheres of activity 

 to enable us to gratify this desire. 



We are now at last in a position to answer the queries 

 first above propounded. It needs no argument to prove 

 that the only form of associated life that conforms to the 

 conditions necessary to the attainment of the greatest 

 human happiness is that which we designated above as the 

 ideal state. Hence we can clearly perceive why we ou<;ht 

 to help along the forces of social evolution, why we ought 

 to believe in true civilization ; for what does it all mean but 

 a closer approximation to that state of existence in which 

 the conditions to the attainment of the greatest possible 

 happiness are supposed to have been fulfilled ? 

 /The idea] sncjpfy is but the logical outcome of all this 

 striving after the greatest attainable happiness ; for being 

 composed of men who are perfectly peaceful, perfectly just, 

 and perfectly beneficent ; of men whose conduct has simul- 

 taneously reached its physical, biological, psychological, 

 and sociological evolutionary limit, it must ex, necessitate 

 present a state of affairs where human beings, by conforming 

 to all the requirements of their surroundings, shall find 

 the greatest possible happiness in so doing, and thus realize 



