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“ THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 
J 5 
discourse on Aggression, Robbery, Revenge, Justice, Generosity, 
Humanity, Veracity, Obedience, Industry, Temperance, and 
Chastity. In the summary of “ Induction of Ethics,” Mr. Spencer’s 
outlook is not that of a pessimist. It is that of a qualified 
optimist. The passage from a militant to an industrial age 
cannot be reached without conflict, and we in these days 
occupy a transitional stage. The moralist and the socio¬ 
logist, therefore, while being content with moderate results, 
must yet “ persevere with undiminished efforts, they have to see 
how comparatively little can be done, and yet find it worth while to 
do that little.” And this is Mr. Spencer’s highest generalization :— 
“ But to the few who, looking back on the changes which past 
thousands of years have witnessed, look forward to the kindred 
changes which future thousands of years may be expected to bring, 
it will be a satisfaction to contemplate a humanity so adapted to 
harmonious social life that all needs are spontaneously and 
pleasurably filled by each without injury to others.” 
In the “ Ethics of Individual Life” (III.), Mr. Spencer aims at 
the highest ideal, and utterly dismisses the notion of any diminu¬ 
tion or loss of authority. He declares that Instead of finding 
that evolutionary ethics gives countenance to lower forms of conduct 
than those at present enjoined, we shall find that, contrariwise, 
evolutionary ethics is intolerant of much which those who profess 
to have the highest guidance think harmless or justifiable.” During 
the last few years a question, which originally appeared as the 
title of a book by a contemporary writer, “ Is Life Worth Living?” 
has been frequently under discussion. Mr. Spencer answers this 
most conclusively. “Life in general,” he says, “ is a desideratum 
or it is not. If it is a desideratum , then all those modes of conduct 
which are conducive to a complete form of it, are to be morally 
approved. If, contrariwise, life is not a desideratum , the subject 
lapses; life should not be maintained, and all questions concerning 
maintenance of it, including the ethical, disappear.” 
Mr. Spencer’s system of Ethics covers a very wide ground, and 
unlike Ethics as commonly conceived, consisting “ solely of interdicts 
on certain kinds of acts which men would like to do and of injunc- 
May, 1893. 
