The task we have before us is to pursue Mr. Spencer's course of thought, undertaken in this spirit, through the succeeding chapters of his work. Neglecting minor criticisms and passing over much valuable teaching, our business is to follow the main course of his reasoning and examine the chief grounds for such authority and guidance which he finally presents to us as the outcome of his study.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] Introduction to "Data of Ethics," p. 3.
CHAPTER III. The Biological View of Ethics.
We shall best arrive at an adequate estimate of Mr. Spencer's ethical system by studying first what he terms the biological view of ethics. But to do this properly requires a survey not only of Chapter VI., which bears this title, but also of the following chapter, which deals with the psychological view. We hold that Mr. Spencer, in this division of his subject into separate stages, makes a false arrangement of his studies. For as on the one hand he endeavours to include the study of biology as a branch of physics, on the other hand he treats it as incapable of comprehensive developmental study apart from the factors of feeling and mind. These divisions are marked features of the form into which Mr. Spencer has thrown his study of human conduct, but they do not correspond with his actual treatment of the subject. The course of thought cannot be fitted into the formal outline. It is found that the understanding of biology is as dependent upon a knowledge of psychology as it is upon a knowledge of physics. The sequence of dependent stages as set forth does not hold good. The conduct of animal and perhaps vegetable organisms is not explicable as the action of mere physical aggregates, and is little understood without the admission of a subjective factor of feeling or mind. It is all very well for Mr. Spencer to argue, as he does in Chapter V., on the "Physical View," that since all conduct is objectively physical action it may be separately studied from the physical point of view; but since the actions of organisms are not to be explained within the limits of physical laws this is a very useless reminder, and Mr. Spencer himself makes nothing of the study since he cannot work out the line of causation in terms of the physical factors only. On the other hand we find that our author has not proceeded three pages into the biological view before he introduces the subjective factors of Pleasure and Pain, which he eventually establishes not merely as the accompaniments of life-sustaining and life-diminishing acts, but even as the causes of further actions which shall at the same time tend to secure Pleasure and avoid Pain, and thus sustain the organism in a continuance of existence. Only for three pages can the purely biological view of animal organisms as physical moving equilibria be maintained; and then with section 32 comes the introduction of subjective factors—factors which are treated not merely as the concomitants of physical processes conducted wholly within and according to the laws of physical sequence, but as actual factors interfering with and affecting the line of causation. It is true Mr. Spencer recognises and deals with the difficulty which obviously arises as to the separability of the psychological view from a biological view which admits the factors of Pleasure and Pain. But the distinction he makes, while justifiable, does not deal with the fundamental difficulty. Psychology treats, roughly speaking, of mentality; it comprises a study of the establishment of sets of inner relations, (i.e., associations of thought, relations of ideas, relations of sequences, the powers of remembrance, of discrimination and identification,) with sets of external relations, namely, the actual existences of which the inner relations are the representatives. The establishment of such inner relations corresponding to outer relations and their widening growth, must have a marked influence upon human conduct so that it may very well be separated for convenience of study from the earlier forms of organic conduct, in which such action is little recognisable. But how to form the connective law is the difficulty. Moreover, it is one thing to establish the fact of evolution, and another thing to explain it. We ourselves admit the fact, indeed, but search in vain for the explanation.
Are we to look for the origin of Pleasure and Pain in those laws of the moving equilibrium which necessitate the generation of internal forces equal and in opposition to external inimical forces? If so, Pleasure and Pain must be regarded as forces—as factors—in the organism, and we must regard the subjective as generated by external physical factors operating upon internal physical factors, and we must regard these subjective factors not merely as concomitant, but as producing physical effects by way of reaction.
So far as it goes there may be a physical view of purposed conduct, and so far as it goes there may be a psychological view, but between the two the biological view is a mere disorderly mixture, borrowing its terms first on one hand and then on the other, and assigning its determining causes first to the physical moving equilibrium theory, and then again to the anticipation of Pleasure and Pain. But the biological law which should co-ordinate these two sets of laws is not formulated, and hence we find more or less gliding, or more or less sudden transition from one set of terms or laws to the other, a defect which is concealed in some measure by the formal divisions of the chapters. But if the course of thought is carefully followed it is found that the actual treatment does not properly fit in. There is an unmistakeable transition from the purely physical set of factors to the purely subjective, and there is no co-ordinated biological law at all. The chapter is a transitional one, it is true, but only in the sense of gradually leaving off the employment of one set of terms, and the gradual employment of another set of terms in the treatment of the same phenomena.