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“ THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.” 
physique ” are severely condemned, not only as affecting the 
parents, but most especially the offspring for generations to come. 
As a natural sequence, he is very impressive on the obligations of 
parenthood. Quoting the lines of our late great Laureate :— 
“ So careful of the type, so careless of the single life,” 
the philosopher is at one with the poet, and he emphasises the 
scientific fact that “ in the order of Nature the welfare of progeny 
takes precedence of the welfare of those who produce them. 
Evolutionary ethics demands that this last end shall be regarded 
as the supreme end.” He insists with all the weight of his great 
wisdom on evils of “ the political ethics now in fashion” that 
it is “ for the parents to beget children and for society to take care 
of them,” ultimately maintaining that “ breach of natural law 
will in this case, as in all cases, be followed in due time by 
nature’s revenge—a revenge which will be terrible in proportion as 
the breach has been great.” Mr. Spencer’s words in this chapter— 
which is indubitably the most important in the book—were 
considered of such high importance that they were reprinted 
in extenso in The Times in their review of the work at the 
time of its publication last summer. In the general conclusions 
of the ethics of individual life, Mr. Spencer’s last words are 
premonitory. He saya:—“ there must be uttered a caution against 
striving too strenuously to reach the Ideal, against straining the 
nature too much out of its inherited form. For the normal 
remoulding can go on but slowly. As there must be moderation 
in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. 
Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid 
consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accom¬ 
panying right actions spontaneously done ; and from a state of 
unstable equilibrium, long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a 
fall towards stable equilibrium in which the primitive nature 
reasserts itself. Betrogression rather than progression may hence 
result.” 
In the final words to the preface of this most interesting 
volume, Mr. Spencer tells us that there have still to be written and 
published the concluding parts of the second volume :— Part V., 
May, 1893 
