Ethics: Origin and Development

In the second part of his "Principles of Ethics, in the division, "The Inductions of Ethics," Spencer came to the conclusion that moral phenomena are extremely complex and that it is difficult to make any generalization concerning them. And, indeed, his conclusions are vague, and there is but one thing he definitely attempts to prove,-namely, that the transition from the militant system to the peaceful, industrial life leads to the development of a series of peaceful social virtues, as had been already pointed out by Comte.

From this follows, wrote Spencer, "that the [innate] moral-sense doctrine in its original form is not true, but it adumbrates a truth, and a much higher truth,-namely, that the sentiments and ideas current in each society become adjusted to the kinds of activity predominating in it." (ยง 191.)

The reader has probably noticed the unexpectedness of this almost platitudinous conclusion. It would be more nearly correct to summarize the data given by Spencer, and a mass of similar data obtained by the study of primitive peoples, in the following form: The basis of all morality lies in the feeling of sociality, inherent in the entire animal world, and in the conceptions of equity, which constitutes one of the fundamental Primary judgments of human reason.

Unfortunately, the rapacious instincts that still survive in men from the time of the primitive stages of their development interfere with the recognition of the feeling of sociality and the consciousness of equity as the fundamental principle of the moral judgments. These instincts were not only preserved but even became strongly developed at various periods of history, in proportion as new methods of acquiring wealth were being created; in proportion as agriculture developed instead of hunting, followed by commerce, industry, banking, railroads, navigation, and finally military inventions, as the inevitable consequence of industrial inventions,-in short, all that which enabled certain societies, that forged ahead of others, to enrich themselves at the expense of their backward neighbours. We have witnessed the latest act of this process in the fearful war of 1914.

The second volume of Spencer's ethics is devoted to the two fundamental conceptions of morality to justice, and to that which goes beyond mere justice and which he called "Beneficence-negative and positive," i. e., what we would call magnanimity, though this term, like the other, is not quite satisfactory.

Even in animal societies wrote Spencer in the chapters which he inserted in his "Ethics" in 1890-We can distinguish good and bad acts, and we call good, i. e., altruistic, those acts that benefit not so much the individual as the given society and which aid the preservation of other individuals, or of the species in general.

From these evolves that which may be called "subhuman justice," which gradually attains an always higher degree of development. Egoistic impulses