But the second question which we have to ask is: What reasons has Mr. Spencer for assigning to pleasure the position which he does assign to it? He tells us, we saw, that the “arguments” both of pessimists and of optimists “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”; and he betters this later by telling us that “since avowed or implied pessimists, and optimists of one or other shade, taken together constitute all men, it results that this postulate is universally accepted” (§ 16). That these statements are absolutely false is, of course, quite obvious: but why does Mr. Spencer think them true? and, what is more important (a question which Mr. Spencer does not distinguish too clearly from the last), why does he think the postulate itself to be true? Mr. Spencer himself tells us his “proof is” that “reversing the application of the words” good and bad—applying the word “good” to conduct, the “aggregate results” of which are painful, and the word “bad” to conduct, of which the “aggregate results” are pleasurable—“creates absurdities” (§ 16). He does not say whether this is because it is absurd to think that the quality, which we mean by the word “good,” really applies to what is painful. Even, however, if we assume him to mean this, and if we assume that absurdities are thus created, it is plain he would only prove that what is painful is properly thought to be so far bad, and what is pleasant to be so far good: it would not prove at all that pleasure is “the supreme end.” There is, however, reason to think that part of what Mr. Spencer means is the naturalistic fallacy: that he imagines “pleasant” or “productive of pleasure” is the very meaning of the word “good,” and that “the absurdity” is due to this. It is at all events certain that he does not distinguish this possible meaning from that which would admit that “good” denotes an unique indefinable quality. The doctrine of naturalistic Hedonism is, indeed, quite strictly implied in his statement that “virtue” cannot “be defined otherwise than in terms of happiness” (§ 13); and, though, as I remarked above, we cannot insist upon Mr. Spencer’s words as a certain clue to any definite meaning, that is only because he generally expresses by them several inconsistent alternatives—the naturalistic fallacy being, in this case, one such alternative. It is certainly impossible to find any further reasons given by Mr. Spencer for his conviction that pleasure both is the supreme end, and is universally admitted to be so. He seems to assume throughout that we must mean by good conduct what is productive of pleasure, and by bad what is productive of pain. So far, then, as he is a Hedonist, he would seem to be a naturalistic Hedonist.
So much for Mr. Spencer. It is, of course, quite possible that his treatment of Ethics contains many interesting and instructive remarks. It would seem, indeed, that Mr. Spencer’s main view, that of which he is most clearly and most often conscious, is that pleasure is the sole good, and that to consider the direction of evolution is by far the best criterion of the way in which we shall get most of it: and this theory, if he could establish that amount of pleasure is always in direct proportion to amount of evolution and also that it was plain what conduct was more evolved, would be a very valuable contribution to the science of Sociology; it would even, if pleasure were the sole good, be a valuable contribution to Ethics. But the above discussion should have made it plain that, if what we want from an ethical philosopher is a scientific and systematic Ethics, not merely an Ethics professedly “based on science”; if what we want is a clear discussion of the fundamental principles of Ethics, and a statement of the ultimate reasons why one way of acting should be considered better
