organism of which he is a member. But, in the case of any one individual, the results of acts done for his own good (or pleasure), and the results of those done for the good (or pleasure) of the whole, do not correspond with any exactness, and often widely diverge. If, then, the individual is consciously aiming at his own good (or pleasure), it is if we look from the point of view of individualistic ethics-only an incidental and fortuitous result of the action when it promotes the common good. When we recognise the social factor in the individual, this judgment must be modified. The evolution-theory shows how he has become so constituted that much that pleases him individually, must of necessity benefit society at large. But there are obvious limits to the harmony. The pleasure or interest of the individual is often the reverse of advantageous to society. It may be the case that in seeking his own private ends, he is yet, to use the words of Adam Smith, "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." But, if so, the end is invisible as well as the hand that points to it. And the good of society can be said to be the natural and uniform consequence of the individual's action, only when he consciously makes it his end. In a word, the true altruism-or, as we might call it, using a word appropriated to another

1 Wealth of Nations, book iv. ch. ii.

purpose the true socialism is when the good of others or of society is pursued for its own sake; and this is to be distinguished from the false or imperfect altruism, in which the same outward result is aimed at, because it is seen to be the most prudent way of promoting one's own good. Thus Mr Spencer's elaborate argument1 to show that conduct of purely egoistic tendency, equally with conduct of purely altruistic tendency, is insufficient and self-destructive, does not reach beyond the external results of action, and leaves it possible for both end and motive to be still egoistic. If "morality is internal," the discussion proves no ethical proposition at all. The egoism of external prudence may indeed be transcended by recognising that the pleasures and pains of others are sources of sympathetic feeling in ourselves. But a subjective or emotional egoism remains. And if the fact that we "receive pleasure from the pleasure of another man "3 is our reason for seeking his pleasure, we shall cease to seek it when a means of greater pleasure offers. In human life as at present constituted, no secure principle of conduct can be based on the agreement of individual with social good; for, if they

1 Data of Ethics, chap. xiii.

2

Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 155; cf. Spencer, Data of Ethics, p. 120.

3 Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 226.

K

(8) altruistic

feelings weak,

diverge, as they often do, there is no standard left for determining their competing claims.

It will not do to divide all men, as Mr Stephen seems to do,1 into two classes, typified by the reasonable and therefore sympathetic man who has struck a bargain with society to take "common stock of pains and pleasures," and the systematically selfish man who "must be an idiot." For most men belong to neither of those two classes: their bargain with society has not been fully completed, and can be withdrawn from temporarily when circumstances make withdrawal convenient, though this process cannot be carried on indefinitely without greatly weakening the sympathetic feelings. The majority of men are neither entirely sympathetic nor yet "systematically selfish": they are unsystematically sympathetic and unsystematically selfish. Such men have the sensibilities that give "leverage" to the moralist.2 But it is futile to tell them to be more sympathetic, or entirely sympathetic. For sympathetic feelings cannot be produced at will: they can only come with that slow modification of the character brought about by conduct. Shall we then say that a man should in all cases of conduct prefer the pleasure of the whole or of others to his own pleasure? If a man were to do so, then perhaps, by consistent selfabnegation, altruism might become pleasant, and 1 Science of Ethics, p. 263. 2 Cf. Ibid., p. 442.

both the man himself and his descendants become more sympathetically constituted? This perfection of altruistic sympathies is looked forward to by Mr Spencer as characteristic of a subsequentthe final stage of evolution. When that period comes, men will compete with one another for the few remaining opportunities of self-sacrifice.1 At present, Mr Spencer argues, pure altruism is suicidal. The individual whose sympathetic nature is undeveloped may, however, go further, and ask what right we have to say that "the moral law" is "conformity to the conditions of social welfare," 2 rather than to those of individual welfare? Evolution, it would seem, does not suffice to prove this proposition, which appears, on the contrary, to be a survival of the social or political way of looking at things inherited from the utilitarian theory. But the point to be proved is why I ought to adopt this standpoint when considering what the end of my action is to be. And this point stands in need of proof here as much as in utilitarianism, and seems almost equally destitute of it.

restrained

Feelings leading to altruistic conduct are un1- and may be doubtedly possessed by the average man at his by reflec present stage of development. Yet the being who tion. is able to reflect on the feelings possessed by him, and compare the characteristics of different emotional states, and the activities following from 1 Data of Ethics, p. 253.

2 Science of Ethics, p. 349.

them, has already before him the possibility of transcending them. He is able to estimate their value in terms of simpler-or of other-feelings; and the man who rigorously does so by the test of personal pleasure and pain manifests the spirit of the egoistic hedonist-a spirit which the theory of empirical evolution does not seem able to exorcise. (c) Tendency At the same time the tendency of the evolutionto supplant theory is not to support but to supplant egoism. Neither the basis of psychological hedonism on not the basis which egoism is usually made to rest, nor the gical hedon independent arguments which have been urged

of evolution

egoism. Evolution

of psycholo

ism,

for its ethical theory, are drawn from the facts of development. The theory of evolution may, indeed, be made to suggest that non-hedonistic action has arisen out of hedonistic: "That all affections are generated by association with experienced pleasure-only that the association is mainly ancestral in the case of 'affections' proper. The dim remembrance of ancestral pleasures, the force of ancestral habit, produces that propension of which Butler speaks, disproportionate to (distinct) expectation and (personal) experience of pleasure." 1 But this view will be rejected by the pure egoist,2 who must maintain that the pain of acting contrary to ancestral habit would in every case be

1 F. Y. Edgeworth, Old and New Methods of Ethics (1877),

2 Cf. A. Barratt, Mind, iii. 280.