II.—The Moral Faculty, while involving processes of discernment and inference, is mainly composed of certain sentiments, the chief being Reciprocity and Sympathy. [These are undoubtedly the largest ingredients in a mature, self-acting conscience; and the way that they contribute to the production of moral sentiment deserved to be, as it has been, well handled. The great omission in Mr. Bailey's account is the absence of the element of authority, which is the main instrument in imparting to us the sense of obligation.]
HERBERT SPENCER.
Mr. Spencer's ethical doctrines are, as yet, nowhere fully expressed. They form part of the more general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out; and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered passages. It is true that, in his first work, Social Statics he presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now regards it as inadequate—more especially in respect of its basis.
Mr. Spencer's conception of Morality as a science, is conveyed in the following passages in a letter written by him to Mr. Mill; repudiating the title anti-utilitarian, which Mr. Mill had applied to him:—
'The note in question greatly startled me by implicitly classing me with Anti-utilitarians. I have never regarded myself as an Anti-utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly understood, concerns not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.
But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.
'Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early stages, planetary Astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and planets; from which accumulated observations it came by and by to be empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the modern science of planetary Astronomy consists of deductions from the law of gravitation—deductions showing why the celestial bodies necessarily occupy certain places at certain times. Now, the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient and modern Astronomy, is analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the Expediency-Morality, and Moral Science properly so-called. And the objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism, is, that it recognizes no more developed form of morality—does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of Moral Science.
'To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed nervous organizations—just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organised and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that just as the space-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of Geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them; so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science, and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them.'
The relations between the Expediency-Morality, and Moral Science, conceived by Mr. Spencer to be, the one transitional, and the other ultimate, are further explained in the following passage from his essay on 'Prison-Ethics':—
'Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social arrangements: to which end both elements of the compromise must be kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system of things far too good for men as they are; it is not less true that mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into utopian absurdities; expediency is indebted to absolute morality for all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is relatively right; it still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other. That is to say, though we must ever aim to do what is best for the present times, yet we must ever bear in mind what is abstractedly best; so that the changes we make may be towards it, and not away from it.'