104 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



intermittent fire and force. To aim at the happiness of 

 others, at that of the greatest number, is so far from 

 being the right goal of moral action, that if we set about 

 it with all the skill and wisdom and resource at our 

 command, we should scarcely succeed in effecting much 

 happiness, or even a balance of happiness, for one solitary 

 individual. For how ill most of us succeed in promoting 

 the happiness of the one individual with whose case and 

 aspirations we are best acquainted ! how lamentably in 

 general we succeed in securing our own happiness ! How 

 little, then, could we do for others if we tried our utmost ; 

 how little for the happiness of all by directly aiming at 

 it, or in any other way than by first trying to secure a 

 moderate amount for ourselves and those directly depen- 

 dent on us, and then, or subsidiary to this, by filling 

 some function generally useful to mankind. 



The scientific objection to the utilitarianism of 

 Bentham, and the love and labour for humanity, is some- 

 what different, being grounded on the fact that these 

 systems ignore the most generalized conclusions of history 

 and experience. They ignore the facts and conditions of 

 modern life and society ; further, the fundamental facts 

 of all life and of all conceivable societies as disclosed by 

 the sciences of biology and sociology ; * and, further yet, 

 the obvious facts of human nature, of which we are all 

 conscious, but which are only systematically brought 

 before us in the science of psychology. 



And, first, " the love of humanity " in any wide and 

 real sense is opposed to the permanent facts of human 

 nature to facts, at least, which have remained in the 

 species since the days of our rugged primitive ancestors, 

 and which, to all appearance, have still a long vitality 



* See Spencer, Data of Etliics, ch. xi. and xiii. ; also The Study of 

 Sociology, p. 185. 



