50 



Bain, Spencer also maintains that "pains are the correlatives 

 of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the 

 correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare. It is an inevi- 

 table deduction from the hypothesis of evolution, that races 

 of sentient creatures could have come into existence under 

 no other conditions." 1 



(6) Ethics. 



In the foregoing has been laid a foundation upon which 

 Spencer erects his system of ethics. The psychological and 

 the physiological have come within the scope of the one law 

 of evolution. Still under the same law, the moral conscious- 

 ness is but another stage in the development, a higher adapta- 

 tion to environment, for the preservation of the physical 

 organism through pleasure and pain factors. This affords us 

 a transition to a consideration of Spencer's 'Principles of 

 Ethics' and particularly Part I of that work known as 'The 

 Data of Ethics.' The latter was published in separate form 

 in 1879, but it was not until 1893 that the complete work was 

 issued. 



Spencer's statement in his 'Principles of Psychology' as 

 to the function of pleasure and pain in the sphere of morality 

 is given full expression in his ethics. For example, it is claimed 

 that "If we glance afresh at the cases before indicated, in 

 which there is a self-sacrifice of parent for the benefit of off- 

 spring, we observe that throughout, this self-sacrifice is made 

 in gratification of a powerful instinct, 2 and is a source of plea- 

 sure, and the negation of it an extreme pain." 3 And after 

 citing other instances of a like nature, Spencer concludes: 

 "In all which illustrations the one truth to be observed 

 and carried with us, is that there gradually evolves with the 

 evolution of a higher life, an organic altruism, which in relation 

 to a certain limited class of other beings, works to the effect of 

 making what we call self-sacrifice not a sacrifice in the ordi- 

 nary sense of the word, but an act which brings more pleasure 

 than pain." 4 In fact "The final justification for maintaining 

 life can only be the reception from it of a surplus of pleasurable 

 feeling over painful feeling, and that goodness or badness can 

 be ascribed to acts which subserve life or hinder life only on 

 this supposition." 6 



Although, according to this view, our criteria for moral 

 conduct are ultimately pleasure and pain, yet it may be 



^'Principles of Psychology" 124. 



'Instincts arise out of reflex action. See Prin. of Psy. 191, 194 



'"Principles of Ethics", Appendix to Pt. I. 



4 Ibid. 



o.c. 10. 



