General Considerations
The course of civilization could not possibly have been other than it has been.
Progress shows us that perfect individuation joined to the greatest mutual dependence will be reached in the future of the race. There will be an ultimate identity of personal and social interests, and a disappearance of evil. Spencer gives, however, a number of arguments to prove that the interest of society is, at present also, the interest of the individual.
The "Theory of Population" (published in 1852), which is founded on the theory of an antagonism between the intellectual and the reproductive powers, and on the ancient theory of a direct relation between skull-capacity or brain-size and intellectual power, contains this passage: "From the beginning, pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth's surface. It forced men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily pressing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due peopling of the globe, and the bringing of all its habitable parts into the highest state of culture,—after having brought all processes for the satisfaction of human wants to the greatest perfection,—after having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for social life,—after having done all this, we see the pressure of population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself to an end."
In a letter to Mr. Mill, published in Bain's "Mental and Moral Science" (p. 721, 3d edition), Spencer repudiates the title of Anti-Utilitarian, which Mr. Mill, in view of the criticisms of Utilitarianism contained in "Social Statics," had applied to him. He defines his position in respect to Utilitarianism as follows: "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 the 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 organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing 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."
In "Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals"[39] (1871), Spencer, after quoting portions of the above letter as defining his position, continues with a consideration of the continual readjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable, the former of which prescribes a system far too good for men as they are, the latter of which does not of itself tend to establish a system better than the existing one; and he reiterates his law of the perfect man as follows:—