270 Evolution of Morals. 



while it discards the errors of conflicting ethical systems. 

 It recognizes alike the intuitional and the experiential 

 nature of conscience ; it is an intuition in the individual 

 resulting from experience in the race. Conceiving of Deity 

 as the Power immanent in all the processes of evolution, — 

 as immediately manifested in the nature of things, — and of 

 ethical endeavor as the action of human volition in the effort 

 to achieve harmony with this evolutionary tendency in 

 nature and society, it recognizes also an underlying truth in 

 the conception that moral action is obedience to the divine 

 will. The obedience, however, is not to a testamentary 

 will of God, made known in a verbal revelation, but to his 

 actual will, revealed in the instant operation of natural 

 and universal laws. " Fulness of life " is only another term 

 for that "perfection or excellence of nature" which yet 

 another school of thinkers regards as the ultimate object of 

 moral action. Rising above empirical utilitarianism, the 

 conclusions of Moral Science harmonize with the conception 

 that Virtue, not egoistic pleasure, should be the object of 

 ethical endeavor ; yet it recognizes also that happiness is 

 the natural concomitant of that perfection of life which all 

 virtuous activities have in view, and is therefore in one 

 sense the end, though it cannot be the immediate object of 

 pursuit, in the perfect life.* 



Deducing its system from the actual facts involved in 

 the evolution of conduct, Moral Science recognizes both an 

 absolute ethic, adapted to the perfect man in an ideal state 

 of society, and a relative ethic, applicable to all men in 

 each successive stage of social evolution. In many of the 

 affairs of life there is fortunately for us no conflict between 

 these two standards of judgment. In the relations of the 

 well-ordered family, for example, all natural individual 

 activities should be promotive of reciprocal satisfactions 

 which tend to the completion of each individual life. Mutual 

 service should bring mutual reward and happiness. The 

 subject of ethics, however, in its total scope, is a very com- 

 plex one. It is easy to turn a syllogism ; it is not so easy, 

 always, to decide what is right in the multifarious situations 

 of life. Many of the problems of practical affairs are in- 

 capable of solution by the application of the simple tests 

 required by an ideal standard of perfect conduct. A recent 

 writer in the Fortnightly Revieiv has treated of " The Ethics 



* Spencer's Data of Ethics. 



