32. Whatever be the degree of Mr. Spencer’s own guilt, what has just been said will serve to illustrate the kind of fallacy which is constantly committed by those who profess to “base” Ethics on Evolution. But we must hasten to add that the view which Mr. Spencer elsewhere most emphatically recommends is an utterly different one. It will be useful briefly to deal with this, in order that no injustice may be done to Mr. Spencer. The discussion will be instructive partly from the lack of clearness, which Mr. Spencer displays, as to the relation of this view to the “evolutionistic” one just described; and partly because there is reason to suspect that in this view also he is influenced by the naturalistic fallacy.
We have seen that, at the end of his second chapter, Mr. Spencer seems to announce that he has already proved certain characteristics of conduct to be a measure of its ethical value. He seems to think that he has proved this merely by considering the evolution of conduct; and he has certainly not given any such proof, unless we are to understand that “more evolved” is a mere synonym for “ethically better.” He now promises merely to confirm this certain conclusion by showing that it “harmonizes with the leading moral ideas men have otherwise reached.” But, when we turn to his third chapter, we find that what he actually does is something quite different. He here asserts that to establish the conclusion “Conduct is better in proportion as it is more evolved” an entirely new proof is necessary. That conclusion will be false, unless a certain proposition, of which we have heard nothing so far, is true—unless it be true that life is pleasant on the whole. And the ethical proposition, for which he claims the support of the “leading moral ideas” of mankind, turns out to be that “life is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling” (§ 10). Here, then, Mr. Spencer appears, not as an Evolutionist, but as a Hedonist, in Ethics. No conduct is better, because it is more evolved. Degree of evolution can at most be a criterion of ethical value; and it will only be that, if we can prove the extremely difficult generalisation that the more evolved is always, on the whole, the pleasanter. It is plain that Mr. Spencer here rejects the naturalistic identification of “better” with “more evolved”; but it is possible that he is influenced by another naturalistic identification—that of “good” with “pleasant.” It is possible that Mr. Spencer is a naturalistic Hedonist.
33. Let us examine Mr. Spencer’s own words. He begins this third chapter by an attempt to show that we call “good the acts conducive to life, in self or others, and bad those which directly or indirectly tend towards death, special or general” (§ 9). And then he asks: “Is there any assumption made” in so calling them? “Yes”; he answers, “an assumption of extreme significance has been made—an assumption underlying all moral estimates. The question to be definitely raised and answered before entering on any ethical discussion, is the question of late much agitated—Is life worth living? Shall we take the pessimist view? or shall we take the optimist view? … On the answer to this question depends every decision concerning the goodness or badness of conduct.” But Mr. Spencer does not immediately proceed to give the answer. Instead of this, he asks another question: “But now, have these irreconcilable opinions [pessimist and optimist] anything in common?” And this question he immediately answers by the statement: “Yes, there is one postulate in which pessimists and optimists agree. Both their arguments assume it to be self-evident that life is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling” (§ 10). It is to the defence of this statement that the rest of the chapter is devoted; and at the end Mr. Spencer formulates his conclusion in the following words: “No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by whatever name—gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception” (§ 16 ad fin.).
Now in all this, there are two points to which I wish to call attention. The first is that Mr. Spencer does not, after all, tell us clearly what he takes to be the relation of Pleasure and Evolution in ethical theory. Obviously he should mean that pleasure is the only intrinsically desirable thing; that other good things are “good” only in the sense that they are means to its existence. Nothing but this can properly be meant by asserting it to be “the ultimate moral aim,” or, as he subsequently says (§ 62 ad fin.), “the ultimately supreme end.” And, if this were so, it would follow that the more evolved conduct was better than the less evolved, only because, and in proportion as, it gave more pleasure. But Mr. Spencer tells us that two conditions are, taken together, sufficient to prove the more evolved conduct better: (1) That it should tend to produce more life; (2) That life should be worth living or contain a balance of pleasure. And the point I wish to emphasise is that if
