Il6 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



personal, but social. What is personal is not moral, 

 but hedonistic. 



As compared with Spencer, Stephen also deals 

 mainly with one great harmonious process of evolu- 

 tion, though with him it is purely biological either 

 the maintenance of health, or the fuller unfolding of 

 life ; and he does not trouble us with definitions in 

 terms of matter and motion, or with hymns of praise 

 to complexity. '"'" Spencer's second great ideal, that of 

 balance between egoism and altruism, is dismissed by 

 Stephen as a Utopian dream; but he would dearly 

 like to lay hold of it, if he dared, for he is as much a 

 hedonist as Spencer; and, in the absence of perfect 

 righteousness even from Utopia, Mr. Stephen's whole 

 moral world lies at the mercy of chance. On Mr. 

 Spencer's third ideal, that of political and social 

 laissez faire, Mr. Stephen finds no occasion to ex- 

 press an opinion in his own more purely ethical 

 treatise. J 



Next, if we contrast Mr. Stephen's positions with 

 those of Darwin, or rather with those suggested by 

 Darwin's views, and worked out later in their ethical 

 and social bearings by other writers, we observe an 

 almost entire absence of any doctrine of struggle for 

 existence. Evolution is accepted in the Darwinian 

 sense, but little or no reference is made to the Dar- 

 winian theory of the conditions of evolution. That 

 remains true even in regard to the few passages 

 where Mr. Stephen in a sense Darwinises, speaking 

 not of one human social tissue, but of diverse forms 

 of tissue. These various tissues may be thought of 

 as competing with each other, but are hardly recog- 

 nised as struggling for life, and as either dying out 



