THE DATA OF ETHICS. 
61 
It may at first appear a trifle incongruous that a Natural 
History and Microscopical Society should concern itself 
with Ethics. For surely the inhabitants of our ponds and 
hedgerows live “ without a conscience,” if not without “an 
aim ; ” surely the physiological conditions or concomitants of 
justice and mercy are not determinable by the most assiduous 
microscopist. Yet life in all its forms is the subject of 
Natural History ; the simple conduct of the lowest organism 
is linked by a myriad gradations with the conduct of the 
highest; and until we understand those great biological 
generalisations, which are as true for the Amoeba as for Man, 
we shall never truly comprehend any part of those sciences 
of mind and morals, which are themselves but sections of 
the science of life. “Just as, fully to understand the part 
of conduct which Ethics deals with, we must study human 
conduct as a whole; so, fully to understand human conduct 
as a whole, we must study it as a part of that larger whole, 
constituted by the conduct of animate beings in general.”* 
It is, indeed, chiefly in this breadth of foundation that 
Mr. Spencer’s system differs from the empirical utilitarianism 
of Bentham and John Stuart Mill. All Utilitarians must, in 
the last analysis, estimate conduct by results. Conduct is 
good, if in the long run it promotes happiness; bad, if in the 
long run it decreases happiness. On this all are agreed; 
this is the common ground of Optimist and Pessimist; this, 
as Mr. Spencer shows, is virtually accepted even when 
verbally denied. Whether we estimate conduct by its relation 
to abstract virtue, to an ideal perfection of character, or to 
rectitude of motive; whether we invoke the Divine sanction, 
the legal sanction, or the sanction of conscience, our theory 
still involves an implicit reference to happiness as the ulti¬ 
mate end and aim. Theories differ by the varying degree in 
which they recognise the laws of natural sequence, and the 
interdependence of all departments of Nature. Empirical 
utilitarianism, for instance, takes no account of the established 
principles of biology, but seeks to confine itself to an induc¬ 
tion which never can be complete. It is as though, declining 
to accept the law of gravitation, we were to insist on using 
Attwood’s machine to prove experimentally the rate at which 
every apple falls to the ground. Attwood’s machine is most 
useful for learners and as a means of verification, but there 
are a great many objects to which it cannot be applied, and 
physics certainly never would have become a science unless 
physicists had been willing to reason downward from law or 
* “ Data of Ethics,” Oh. I., § 2 
