fully developed, makes us feel that the very fact that the man practises honesty only out of policy eliminates from his honesty its quality of virtue.

"Acts are good or bad according as their aggregate effects increase men's happiness or increase their misery." Let us test this ethical standard by some familiar facts, and see if it is a correct measure of moral worth, or if moral ideas have been formed under its implicit guidance, as Mr. Spencer says. In the first place, the seeking of pleasure for one's self ought to be, in accordance with his theory, one of the chief duties of man. We recognise it, indeed, as quite proper, when not incompatible with other claims; but no one regards it as a duty, the neglect of which he feels to be a sin. It is a privilege simply, which he is at full liberty to enjoy or not. Again, the pursuit of agriculture and manufacture, rather than a hunting life, has been shown by Mr. Spencer to be most essential to social advancement and the increase of general happiness. "Conduct gains ethical sanction," he tells us, as it becomes more and more industrial." Nevertheless, these special activities are neither ranked as virtues by the moral sense of mankind, nor is abstention from them reckoned sin. Similarly, thrift and avarice, the political economists tell us, have done, and still do, much more for the welfare of society than charity or piety. Yet the former certainly rank far below the latter in the moral scale. The custom of blood revenge, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, has been in the past and still is one of the most powerful deterrents from crime. Shall we call it a virtue ?

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Again, the chief factor in the development of civilisation, the formation of society, and the adoption of industrial life, is the increase of population. This multiplies happiness, not only in the ratio of the multiplication of mankind, but in the ratio of the more complex activities it forces into action in man. Increase of population is, according to Mr. Spencer's

view, the very creator of modern morality. Nothing else, if his system of morals be correct, ought to be a higher and plainer duty than the procreation of offspring. Yet has the tribunal of conscience ever pronounced celibacy or childlessness, flagrant moral sins? They may be called mistakes or misfortunes, but not transgressions. If there have been people who from purely religous notions, have looked upon failure to rear offspring as a dereliction of duty to departed ancestors, such cases are more than matched by the races and ages in which celibacy has been reckoned the virtuous state, and procreation sinful.

The fact is, that instead of its usefulness for the production and extension of happiness being the unfailing test of the rightness of an action, it is, on the contrary, in not a few cases, precisely the detachment of an act from all considerations of pleasure, or pain, or expediency, that gives it its elevation in the moral scale. This is the case, for instance, in many acts of heroism, such as the return of Regulus to his death at Carthage in observance of his promise, or the unswerving obedience to orders by the Six Hundred who made the famous charge at Balaclava.

There is no better test of the correctness of any proposed ethical standard, than the application of it to the qualities exhibited in those grand historic acts which by common consent keep their place at the head of the world's roll of honour. In the position just discussed we found the Spencerian standard disclosing its inadequacy. Let us look at another similar point. Not satisfied with putting the virtuousness of any act in its tendency to promote happiness, Mr. Spencer goes on to lay it down (and it is of course a logical deduction) that no act is absolutely good if it produces any pain. It is evident, then, that none of those noblest acts of martyrdom and patriotism, the self-sacrifice of a Huss or an Arnold Von Winkelried, are any longer entitled to be reckoned among the supremely virtuous deeds. They must

give place to such more politic actions as can contrive to combine with their ministry to others' happiness a thrifty securing of one's own.

Does the reader desire an example of what Mr. Spencer considers an "absolutely good action," one that in the Ethics of evolution is to be ranked as the climax of rectitude? Here is what, in strict accordance with his theory, he singles out as the ne plus ultra of good conduct.*

Foremost, the action of a healthy mother, suckling a healthy infant; or the relation of a father to a sympathetic and docile son. Next, the life of a poet, painter, or musician, who obtains his living by acts that are directly pleasurable to him, while they yield, immediately or remotely, pleasure to others. Then certain of the so-called benevolent acts, such as combine the obtaining of pleasure for self with the giving it to another; as, for example, when one who has slipped is saved from a fall by a bystander, or when an explanation removes a misunderstanding between friends.

That which the moral sense of the world has always estimated as the greatest addition to the moral worth of an action-viz., its cost to one's self, is reckoned by Mr. Spencer as impairing its absolute rightness. The noble refusal of a Jerome of Prague to recant his faith is very far from absolutely right, for it brings a great deal of suffering upon both himself and the community whose religious torpor it painfully awakens. But the action of the opera singer, who can put a thousand dollars a night into her own pocket while tickling the ears of the people is conduct absolutely right, because both sides profit by the transaction!! This certainly is not a scientific analysis of our ethical notions. If it is true, it is a radical overturning of the fundamental principles of morality.

(2.) Suppose we take happiness for our ultimate end, and

* Data of Ethics, pp. 261, 262.

conduciveness to happiness as our test of the absolutely right. Have we then a standard that can be scientifically used to determine the merit of actions?

By no means. For what is the happiness we shall take as our standard? Happiness is not a thing of a single kind, but of many kinds, essentially different in their claims on the regard of an intelligent being. There is happiness of the belly, happiness of the eye and ear, happiness of the mind, happiness of the soul. Which of these shall we take as our end? Of course, I do not mean that I am doubtful which I myself would choose. The critic would be very stupid who should so misunderstand me. The question is, which ought all men to aim at, on the Spencerian theory? The aim of life in this system is, remember, to make most sure of surplus of pleasure, special and general. By the religious man, of course, the highest pleasure is to be found in the satisfaction of his spiritual nature. For the man in whom this part of his nature is little developed and in whom the understanding predominates, pleasure consists in the gratification of intellectual tastes. The sensual man, in his turn, finds his happiness, as naturally and exclusively, in satisfying the demands of his bodily appetites. Men of each class will place the end of life in the attainment of that kind of happiness which to them is the desirable kind.

Happiness is not an entity or a quality in itself; but a simple equilibrium between desire and attainment. So far from being something primary and absolute, and so fit for being an ultimate end, it is a result, often quite accidental, of varying and transitory causes. It is a part, not a whole, and supposes always the craving or felt lack, the outreach and struggle for the object of its longing, and the chance of success in this struggle; in fact, all those inner vital needs, desires, and tendencies, and those outer supplies, by which a new equilibrium is reached. The only thing that the idea of happiness fixes is this equilibrium between desire and

attainment. But this equilibrium, as all know, can be found as much on the lowest as on the highest level of life. It comes to the ignorant and the brutal, not less than to the intelligent and the spiritual-minded.

To make happiness, then, the ultimate aim is to give the man who would know his duty a compass that would change its direction in the hands of every different class in the community, according to the plane of development on which he stands. The variableness of the notion or standard of virtue amongst different races and ages, is one of the standing objections made by the utilitarian school against the intuitive moralists. But the variability of the idea of happiness is still greater. Not only do the notions of happiness of a worm-eating Australian or a Polynesian cannibal differ toto cælo from those of the refined European, but in the same nation and age the conceptions of beatitude vary almost as much. Even with the same individual they vary with each shifting mood. If happiness is to be of any use as an ethical end, we must fix on some one kind of happiness as the standard. What kind does Mr. Spencer select?

When we make this inquiry, we find another defect of his (Mr. Spencer's) system. He makes no clear distinctions between different kinds of happiness as of different worth, but practically lumps them all together, and asks simply for the sum-total. It is surplus of pleasure, the maximum gratification, special and general, accompanied with the least pain, that is the measure of good, according to Mr. Spencer (see p. 268). A qualified and average supremacy is allowed, it is true, to the more compound and representative feelings over the more simple and presentative; but this is due simply to the experienced benefit of such a course for the aggregate of happiness (pp. 112, 113). The higher gratifications have no intrinsic superiority claimed * Data of Ethics, p. 185.