doubts if human beings are yet honest and competent enough to make so democratic a system of industry efficient; but he is all for trying. He foresees a time when industry will no longer be directed by absolute masters, and men will no longer sacrifice their lives in the production of rubbish. "As the contrast between the militant and the industrial types is indicated by inversion of the belief that individuals exist for the benefit of the state into the belief that the state exists for the benefit of individuals; so the contrast between the industrial type and the type likely to be evolved from it is indicated by inversion of the belief that life is for work into the belief that work is for life." 1

99 2

VII. ETHICS: THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS

So important does this problem of industrial reconstruction seem to Spencer that he devotes to it again the largest section of The Principles of Ethics (1893)—"this last part of my task to which I regard all the preceding parts as subsidiary." As a man with all the moral severity of the midVictorian, Spencer was especially sensitive to the problem of finding a new and natural ethic to replace the moral code which had been associated with the traditional faith. "The supposed supernatural sanctions of right conduct do not, if rejected, leave a blank. There exist natural sanctions no less pre-emptory, and covering a much wider field." 3

The new morality must be built upon biology. "Acceptance of the doctrine of organic evolution determines certain ethical conceptions." 4 Huxley, in his Romanes lectures at Oxford in 1893, argued that biology could not be taken as an ethical guide; that "nature red in tooth and claw" (as Tennyson was phrasing it) exalted brutality and cunning rather than justice and love; but Spencer felt that a moral code

1 I, 575.

2 Ethics, vol. i, p. xiii.

3 I, 7.

4 I, 25.

which could not meet the tests of natural selection and the struggle for existence, was from the beginning doomed to lipservice and futility. Conduct, like anything else, should be called good or bad as it is well adapted, or mal-adapted, to the ends of life; "the highest conduct is that which conduces to the greatest length, breadth, and completeness of life." Or, in terms of the evolution formula, conduct is moral according as it makes the individual or the group more integrated and coherent in the midst of a heterogeneity of ends. Morality, like art, is the achievement of unity in diversity; the highest type of man is he who effectively unites in himself the widest variety, complexity, and completeness of life.

This is a rather vague definition, as it must be; for nothing varies so much, from place to place and from time to time, as the specific necessities of adaptation, and therefore the specific content of the idea of good. It is true that certain forms of behavior have been stamped as good-as adapted, in the large, to the fullest life-by the sense of pleasure which natural selection has attached to these preservative and expansive actions. The complexity of modern life has multiplied exceptions, but normally, pleasure indicates biologically useful, and pain indicates biologically dangerous, activities.2 Nevertheless, within the broad bounds of this principle, we find the most diverse, and apparently the most hostile, conceptions of the good. There is hardly any item of our Western moral code which is not somewhere held to be immoral; not only polygamy, but suicide, murder of one's own countrymen, even of one's parents, finds in one people or another a lofty moral approbation.

The wives of the Fijian chiefs consider it a sacred duty to suffer strangulation on the death of their husbands. A woman who had been rescued by Williams 'escaped during the night, and, swimming across the river, and presenting her1 I, 22, 26; ii, 3.

* I, 98.

self to her own people, insisted on the completion of the sacrifice which she had in a moment of weakness reluctantly consented to forego'; and Wilkes tells of another who loaded her rescuer 'with abuse,' and ever afterwards manifested the most deadly hatred towards him." 1 "Livingstone says of the Makololo women, on the shores of the Zambesi, that they were quite shocked to hear that in England a man had only one wife: to have only one was not 'respectable.' So, too, in Equatorial Africa, according to Reade, 'If a man marries, and his wife thinks that he can afford another spouse, she pesters him to marry again; and calls him a "stingy fellow" if he declines to do so.' 2

Such facts, of course, conflict with the belief that there is an inborn moral sense which tells each man what is right and what is wrong. But the association of pleasure and pain, on the average, with good or evil conduct, indicates a measure of truth in the idea; and it may very well be that certain moral conceptions, acquired by the race, become hereditary with the individual. Here Spencer uses his favorite formula to reconcile the intuitionist and the utilitarian, and falls back once more upon the inheritance of acquired characters.

3

Surely, however, the innate moral sense, if it exists, is in difficulties today; for never were ethical notions more confused. It is notorious that the principles which we apply in our actual living are largely opposite to those which we preach in our churches and our books. The professed ethic of Europe and America is a pacifistic Christianity; the actual ethic is the militaristic code of the marauding Teutons from whom the ruling strata, almost everywhere in Europe, are derived. The practice of duelling, in Catholic France and Protestant Germany, is a tenacious relic of the original Teutonic code.4 Our moralists are kept busy apologizing for these contradic

1 I, 469.

2 I, 327. 3 I, 471.

4 I, 323.

tions, just as the moralists of a later monogamic Greece and India were hard put to it to explain the conduct of gods who had been fashioned in a semi-promiscuous age.1

Whether a nation develops its citizens on the lines of Christian morality or the Teutonic code depends on whether industry or war is its dominant concern. A militant society exalts certain virtues and condones what other peoples might call crimes; aggression and robbery and treachery are not so unequivocally denounced among peoples accustomed to them by war, as among peoples who have learned the value of honesty and non-aggression through industry and peace. Generosity and humanity flourish better where war is infrequent and long periods of productive tranquillity inculcate the advantages of mutual aid.2 The patriotic member of a militant society will look upon bravery and strength as the highest virtues of a man; upon obedience as the highest virtue of the citizen; and upon silent submission to multiple motherhood as the highest virtue of a woman.3 The Kaiser thought of God as the leader of the German army, and followed up his approbation of duelling by attending divine service. The North American Indians "regarded the use of the bow and arrow, the war-club and spear, as the noblest employments of man. . . . They looked upon agricultural and mechanical labor as degrading. . Only during recent times-only now that national welfare is becoming more and more dependent on superior powers of production," and these "on the higher mental faculties, are other occupations than militant ones rising into respectability." 5

Now war is merely wholesale cannibalism; and there is no reason why it should not be classed with cannibalism and unequivocally denounced. "The sentiment and the idea of justice can grow only as fast as the external antagonisms of

1 I, 458.

2 I, 391 f.

3 Cf. the philosophy of Nietzsche.

4 I, 318.

I, 423-4.

societies decrease, and the internal harmonious coöperations of their members increase." 1 How can this harmony be promoted? As we have seen, it comes more readily through freedom than through regulation. The formula of justice should be: "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." 2 This is a formula hostile to war, which exalts authority, regimentation and obedience; it is a formula favorable to peaceful industry, for it provides a maximum of stimulus with an absolute equality of opportunity; it is conformable to Christian morals, for it holds every person sacred, and frees him from aggression; and it has the sanction of that ultimate judge-natural selection-because it opens up the resources of the earth on equal terms to all, and permits each individual to prosper according to his ability and his work.

3

This may seem, at first, to be a ruthless principle; and many will oppose to it, as capable of national extension, the family principle of giving to each not according to his ability and product, but according to his need. But a society governed on such principles would soon be eliminated.

During immaturity benefits received must be inversely proportionate to capacities possessed. Within the familygroup most must be given where least is deserved, if desert is measured by worth. Contrariwise, after maturity is reached benefit must vary directly as worth: worth being measured by fitness to the conditions of existence. The illfitted must suffer the evils of unfitness, and the well-fitted profit by their fitness. These are the two laws which a species must conform to if it is to be preserved. . . . If, among the young, benefit were proportioned to efficiency, the species would disappear forthwith; and if, among adults, benefit were proportioned to inefficiency, the species would disappear by decay in a few generations. . The only justification for the analogy between parent and child, and 1 I, 377.

2 II, 46.

3 I, 257.