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

by Cora May Williams

"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." Spencer further expressly repudiates empirical Utilitarianism, and denies the assertion of Mr. Hutton that he by implication recognizes no parentage for morals beyond that of the accumulation and organization of the facts of experience. On this head he says:—

"In the genesis of an idea, the successive experiences, be they of sounds, colors, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects that combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion, the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures, though they have a certain community of general nature. Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of pleasure or pain that were associated with them. We have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why they have grown up, though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected experiences. The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized connections between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often recurred together, though the relation between them has not been consciously generalized"—associations which though little perceived, nevertheless serve as incentives or deterrents. Much deeper down than the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connections. The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological accompaniments of destructive action.

"What we call the natural language of anger is due to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling; this, too, has a physical interpretation."

Of the altruistic sentiments, Spencer says: "The development of these has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy, and sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which conferred direct and indirect benefits; the pains inflicted being mainly incidental and indirect." Sympathy is "the concomitant of gregariousness; the two having all along increased by reciprocal aid."

"If we suppose all thought of rewards or punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine of utility, but by the painful associations established in him. And it is clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts, repetitions of kind deeds and experiences of the sympathetic gratifications that follow tend continually to make stronger the association between deeds and feelings of happiness."

Spencer continues: "Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there may result a deliberate pursuit of the sympathetic gratifications. There may also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter results are respectively detrimental and beneficial—that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster; and then there may become current such summations of experience as 'honesty is the best policy.' But so far from regarding these intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions of utility and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly resulting, in experience, from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that they are socially beneficial and detrimental. When, however, the remote effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and check unsympathetic ones, are immensely strengthened by their alliances. Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of a creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social conduct, mutually enforce them; and every child, as it grows up, daily has impressed on it, by the words and faces and voices of those around, the authority of these highest principles."

The altruistic sentiments develop, and altruistic action becomes habitual, "until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled unchallenged."

And Spencer sums up his objections to the interpretation of his theory of the development of the moral sentiment as follows: "What I have said will make it clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been construed in senses much too narrow.

"Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses and means and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of means and ends—implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to include the connections found in consciousness between states that occur together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the 'Principles of Psychology.'"

In his essay on Prison Ethics (1860), Spencer says: "The antagonistic schools of morals, like many other antagonistic schools, are both right and both wrong. The a priori school has its truth; the a posteriori school has its truth; and for the proper guidance of conduct there should be due recognition of both. On the one hand, it is asserted that there is an absolute standard of rectitude; and respecting certain classes of actions, it is rightly asserted. From the fundamental laws of life and the conditions of social existence are deducible certain imperative limitations to individual action—limitations which are essential to a perfect life, individual and social; or, in other words, essential to the greatest possible happiness. And these limitations, following inevitably as they do from undeniable first principles, deep as the nature of life itself, constitute what we may distinguish as absolute morality.