170 
to offer some “ criticisms and explanations and he com- 
mences with a passage which so clearly exhibits at once the 
general drift and the failure of his argument that it must be 
quoted in full. At p. 150, he says: — 
a We have seen that to admit the desirableness of conscious 
existence, is to admit that conduct should be such as will 
produce a consciousness which is desirable — a consciousness 
which is as much pleasurable and as little painful as may be. 
We have also seen that this necessary implication corresponds 
with the a priori inference, that the evolution of life has been 
made possible only by the establishment of connections be- 
tween pleasures and beneficial actions, and between pains and 
detrimental actions. But the general conclusion reached in 
hotli of these ways , though it covers the area within which our 
special conclusions must fall, does not help us to reach those 
special conclusions. 
“ Were pleasures all of one kind, differing only in degree ; 
were pains all of one kind, differing only in degree ; and could 
pleasures be measured against pains with definite results, the 
problems of conduct would be greatly simplified. Were the 
pleasures and pains serving as incentives and deterrents simul- 
taneously present to consciousness with like vividness, or were 
they all immediately impending, or were they all equidistant 
in time, the problems would be further simplified. And they 
would be still further simplified if the pleasures and pains 
were exclusively those of the actor. But both the desirable 
and the undesirable feelings are of various kinds, makiug 
quantitative comparisons difficult ; some are present and some 
are future, increasing the difficulty of quantitative comparison ; 
some are entailed on self, and some are entailed on others ; again 
increasing the difficulty. So that the gvidanct yielded by the 
primary principle reached is of little service unless supple- 
mented hy the guidance of secondary principles.” 
lfi. Now, what is this but a candid admission of the practical 
valuelessness of the principle which was insisted upon with 
such urgency as the cardinal truth of Ethics, as the one 
sole foundation of our ideas of good and bad in conduct, and 
for the sake of which Mr. Spencer has treated as of secondary 
importance such moral principles as the supremacy of con- 
science ? Is it credible that a primary principle of which the 
guidance "is of little service ” should have been, as Mr. 
Spencer had previously maintained, “ solely the reason ” for our 
moral estimate of actions, or that it can be " unquestionable ” 
that our ideas of the goodness and badness of conduct “ really 
originate from our consciousness of the certainty or proba- 
bility that they will produce pleasures or pains somewhere ?” 
