138 THE REV. H. J. CLARKE ON THE 
One or two remarks having been made :— — 
The AvrHor said:—A few additional words from me seem 
called for in relation to a science, or what professes to be a 
science, which it has been proposed to substitute for the utili- 
tarian science of Expedience-—I allude to that science which 
is to be found in Herbert Spencer’s Data of Hthics. There 
he virtually insists that there is a science of Rectitude in op- 
position to that science which the utilitarians have attempted 
to construct; but that it is not any truly scientific substitute 
for the utilitarian scheme I think will be apparent to those 
persons who have followed my remarks, and who have found 
in my paper a sufficient refutation of the utilitarian doctrine. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, starting from the assumption that such 
actions as are conformable to the nature and requirements of any 
form of sentient life are necessarily productive of pleasure, and 
finding that the motives they presuppose are thereby determined, 
argues that the process of evolution, regarded from a psychic point 
of view, is the pursuit of pleasure. It is thus that man is progressing 
towards that ideally perfect state which, as Mr. Herbert Spencer 
seems to think, he will eventually reach ; egoism, it is assumed, 
being of necessity man’s ultimate and fundamental principle of 
action, but an increasing tendency to subordinate immediate 
pleasures to those which are more remote, yet comparatively large 
and diffused, insuring in due measure the culture and the satisfac- 
tion of altruistic sentiments, thereby profiting the individual, and 
at the same time bringing about more and more the better fulfil- 
ment of the conditions on which the well-being of the race depends 
But what is to be the outcome of human evolution? Is it to be 
a complete assimilation of all individuals in respect of fortune 
and personal endowments? Is it to be the entire obliteration of 
all those differences which may cause preference for one or another ?P 
Is it to be the impossibility of anything like invidious distinc- 
tions? If so, then perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer’s millennium may 
be approachiug ; but if diversities, such as now prevail, are still to 
exist in some measure, then I shall be glad to be informed by those 
who hold that doctrine in what way they think that the extinction 
of envy and jealousy, and of such anti-altruistic sentiments as are 
thereby engendered, viz.: ‘hatred, malice, and all uncharitable- 
ness,” is to be brought about. To me it seems marvellous that 
anyone who knows what men are, who has any knowledge what- 
ever of human nature, can see in egoistic altruism a fence that 
