spoken of as the ethical end; adaptation. Where external circumstances make the attainment of nourishment difficult and precarious, life is shortened in extent, and, within its limits, more occupied with simply maintaining its necessary functions-less full, varied, and active. The same holds good whether the external circumstances are natural or social,-applies equally to those whose energies are exhausted in the production of a bare livelihood from a niggard soil and unpropitious climate, and to those who, under changed conditions, feel the hardship of adapting themselves to a new social medium. Shall we say, then, that the end of human conduct This seems to be is adaptation to environment? the position taken up by some evolutionists. In the language of von Baer,1 "the end of ends is always that the organic body be adapted to the conditions of the earth, its elements and means of nutriment;" and Mr Spencer holds "that all evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to condition."2 The hedonism which Mr Spencer definitely accepts as his ethical principle prevents him, indeed, from fully adopting the theory of human action which von Baer seems to regard as the result of the doctrine of evolution. Yet complete adaptation of constitution to condition is held by him to be characteristic of that perfect form of life to which evolution tends, and the laws of which 1 Reden (1876), ii. 332. 2 Social Statics (1850), p. 77. are to be our guides in our present imperfect social condition. In working out his theory of ethics, he describes acts as "good or bad according as they are well or ill adjusted to ends," identifying the good with "the conduct furthering self-preservation," and the bad with "the conduct tending to self-destruction."1 The notion of self-preservation thus introduced is naturally suggested as the end subserved by the activity of an organism being adjusted to surrounding conditions. Self-preserva- defines the tion, therefore, rather than adaptation to environ- self-preserment, will be regarded as the end, with which adaptation will be connected as the essential means. This notion of self-preservation has played a remarkable part in ethical and psychological discussion since the time of the Stoics. It withdraws attention from the relative and transient feeling of pleasure to the permanence of the living being. Thus, with the Stoics, the notion of self-preservation was accompanied by an ethics hostile to indulgence in pleasure; while, on the other hand, in Spinoza and in Hobbes, pleasure was recognised as the natural consequence of self-preserving acts— the former defining it as a transition from less to greater perfection, the latter as the sense of what helps the vital functions. The theory of evolution has, of course, not only its distinctive contribution to make to the connection between self-preservation 1 Data of Ethics, p. 25. notion of vation. Self-preservation and social-preservation. and pleasure-a subject already referred to,—but also shows how an increasing harmony has been produced between acts which tend to self-preservation and those which tend to social-preservation. With Mr Spencer these two points are united. His doctrine that the "conduct which furthers racemaintenance evolves hand-in-hand with the conduct which furthers self-maintenance "1 is preliminary to the establishment of the proposition that the highest life is one in which egoistic and "altruistic" acts harmonise with one another and with external conditions: "the life called moral is one in which this moving equilibrium reaches completeness or approaches most nearly to completeness." 2 As has been already pointed out, it is not the case, in the present state of human life, that egoistic and altruistic tendencies, even when properly understood, always lead to the same course of conduct; and even the theory of evolution does not do away with the necessity for a "compromise" between them. But, even had the theory of evolution overcome the opposition between the individual and social standpoints, much would still remain to be done for the purpose of constructing a system of ethics, or determining the ethical end. It seems better, therefore, to pass over at present the conflict of competing interests. According to Pascal, 2 Ibid., p. 71. 1 Data of Ethics, p. 16. 3 See above, chap. vi. p. 137 ff. the entire succession of men, the whole course of ages, is to be regarded as one man always living and always learning." And this is a suggestion which the theory of evolution only states more definitely, though it cannot completely vindicate it. On this supposition, self-preservation is socialpreservation, and the possibly divergent interests of the individual and the whole are left out of account. The end for the race then is, according to the theory most explicitly stated by von Baer, a state of "moving equilibrium "; and to this state of affairs we are at least, Mr Spencer holds, indubitably tending. In the final stage of human development, man will be perfectly adapted to the conditions of his environment, so that, to each change. without, there will be an answering organic change. The ideal which seems to be held up to us is that of a time in which there will be no more irksome fretting in the machinery of life, and circumstances will never be unpropitious, because the organism will never be wanting in correspondence with them. end for present conduct: opposed to If this adaptation be adopted as the practical (a) As the end for conduct under present conditions, and not merely as describing a far-off ideal to which we are supposed to be tending, man may continue to progress; manifest a law of progress, but its initiation will be from external conditions. If "adaptation to environment" is consistently made the end, activity will have to be restricted to suiting one's powers to an external order of nature, and desire will have to be curbed when it does not bring the means of satisfaction along with it. "Bene latere " will again be an equivalent for "bene vivere," and happiness will have to be sought in withdrawal from the distractions of political life, and in the restriction of desire. It is strange to see the theory which is supposed to be based upon and to account for progress, returning in this way to an ideal similar to that in which the post-Aristotelian schools took refuge amid the decline of political and intellectual life in Greece. The end which Stoic and Epicurean alike sought in complete emancipation from the conditions of the external world,1 is now, in more scientific phrase, made to consist in complete harmony with these conditions. But, in their practical results, the two theories would seem scarcely to differ. It is not astonishing, therefore, if this gospel of renunciation finds little favour among practical men in our day. It is seen that, if a man has not wants, he will make no efforts, and that, if he make no efforts, his condition can never be bettered. Thus social reformers have often found that the classes they have tried to elevate did not feel the evil of their lot as their benefactors saw it, and they have had to create wants before attempting to satisfy them.2 And the practical tendency 1 Zeller, Phil. d. Griechen, 3d ed., III. i. 454, 470. 2 Lassalle's tirade against the "verdammte Bedürfnisslosigkeit" of the German workman is a case in point. |