A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

by Cora May Williams

Questions of individual morality seem to present a difficulty to this theory of freedom. Thus, for instance, on the principle above adopted, the liberty of drunkenness cannot be condemned as long as the drunkard respects a like liberty in others; and here we fall into the inconsistency of affirming that a man is at liberty to do something essentially destructive of happiness. However, if we admit, as we must, that liberty is the primary law, no desire to get a secondary law fulfilled can warrant us in breaking this primary one; we must deal with secondary laws as best we can.

The first principle above stated may also be secondarily derived. The regulation of conduct is not left to the accident of a philosophical inquiry; the agent of morality is the Moral Sense.

In all ages, but more especially in recent ones, have there been affirmations of the equality of all men and their equal right to happiness. When we find that a belief like this is not only permanent but daily gaining ground, we have good reason to conclude that it corresponds to some essential element of our moral constitution; more especially since we find that its existence is in harmony with that chief prerequisite to greatest happiness lately dwelt upon; and that its growth is in harmony with the law of adaptation, by which the greatest happiness is being wrought out.

To assert, however, that the sense of justice is but the gradually acquired conviction that benefits spring from some kinds of action, and evils from other kinds, the sympathies and antipathies contracted manifesting themselves as a love of justice and a hatred of injustice, is as absurd as to conclude that hunger springs from a conviction of the benefit of eating.

The Moral Sense must be regarded as a special faculty, since, otherwise, there would be nothing during the dormancy of the other faculties, which must sometimes occur, to prevent an infringement on the freedom requisite for their future action.

As Adam Smith has shown in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," the proper regulation of our conduct to others is secured by means of a faculty whose function it is to excite in each being the emotions displayed by the beings about him. The sentiment of justice is nothing but a sympathetic affection of the instinct of personal rights, a sort of reflex function of it. Other things being equal, those persons possessing the strongest sense of personal rights have, also, the strongest sense of the rights of others. There is no necessary connection between the two; but in the average of cases they bear a constant ratio.

It may be objected that if the truth that every man has a freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringe not upon the equal freedom of others, be an axiom, it should be recognized by all, as is not the case. This difficulty seems in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect law recognize an imperfect state. It may further be answered that the Bushman knows nothing of the science of mathematics, yet that arithmetic is a fact; the difference in men's moral perceptions is no difficulty in our way, but rather illustrates the truth of our theory, since man is not yet adapted to the social state.

In further confirmation of the doctrine of the free exercise of function, it may be added that, since non-fulfilment of desire produces misery, if God is to be regarded as willing such non-fulfilment, he must be regarded as willing men's misery; which is absurd. If men are not naturally free, then a doctrine of the divine right of kings is easily reached, and whoever is king must be regarded as such by divine right, no matter how he reached the throne.

Spencer then proceeds to apply his first principle or axiom of freedom to prove the right to life and liberty, to the use of the earth, to property and free speech; and considers further the rights of women and of children, and the political rights of individuals; the constitution and duty of the state; commerce, education, and the poor-laws; government colonization, sanitary supervision, postal arrangements, etc. A remarkable feature of this part of "Social Statics" is that Spencer, while applying his principle with quite an opposite result to all other property, advocates the nationalization of the land, on the ground that the freedom of the individual is right only in so far as it does not hinder a like freedom in others; and that the monopolization of the privileges of land-ownership by individuals does prevent the enjoyment of the same privilege by others.