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Natural Science and Morality. 
TJuly, 
and concord ; in fa 61 that self-interest and selfishness are 
synonymous, and that by such a moral standard that desir- 
able consummation, the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number, would be rendered an impossibility. The late John 
Stuart Mill, in his celebrated work “ Utilitarianism,” while 
fully recognising the worth of happiness as a standard of 
morality, was nevertheless probably led by the above-men- 
tioned difficulty to advocate the maxim that each one was 
to make his own happiness subservient to that of the greatest 
number, — a dogma that must fail in practice, owing to the 
absence of logical incentive to carrying it out. Our task 
will be to show that, so far from the greatest happiness of 
the greatest number being inconsistent with each individual 
consulting his own happiness, this desirable consummation 
can only be attained by that means. 
One hundred and sixty-six years have elapsed since Bernard 
de Mandeville argued that self-interest being the guide of 
adtion, “ those creatures would flourish most which are least 
possessed of understanding ; for the more they know, the 
more would their appetites to be satisfied at each other's 
expense be increased, and therefore the more would they war 
with and exterminate each other.” Whence man, by reason 
of his understanding, would be least fitted to agree long to- 
gether in multitudes.* 
The Grand Jury of Middlesex of that day were seized 
with a panic : they seem to have feared that De Mandeville’s 
theory, that society rested upon a fitfdon, was true, and 
therefore to have burned the book in which that ficftion was 
exposed. The panic has not yet subsided. Many worthy 
people dread the theory of the Survival of the Fittest, be- 
cause, while they recognise that the fittest are those who 
can best provide for themselves, they are still chained to the 
old error which supposed selfishness to be the ideal practice 
of self-interest. 
Before the dawn of Political Economy there was some 
plausibility in the theory that the wealth of the individual 
could only be increased at the expense of his neighbour, and 
that consequently true happiness was only to be found in a 
* “ An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue,” appended to the repub- 
lication (1714) of “ The Grumbling Hive.” It is interesting to notice that 
although self-interest is recognised here as the incentive to conduct, there is a 
failure to reconcile it with order and stability in society, or only half t he truth 
is recognised. This was the same with Hobbes (as related in the “ Leviathan ”), 
and with many others. For an admirable and lucid sketch of some of the 
more important systems of morality, the reader may be referred to Lange’s 
notable historical work “ Geschichte des Materialismus ” (of which we believe 
an English translation is now published). 
