On Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics

by Malcolm Guthrie

The general meaning of "good" and "bad" as applied to actions, then, has reference to their efficiency. The differences of their meaning are due to the end regarded. The meanings are harmonised, however, when we consider that they are applicable to different degrees in the evolution of conduct; the conduct to which we apply the name good is the relatively more evolved conduct, and "bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved. This involves a reference to the three stages of biological evolution, the individual, the offspring, and society."

"Lastly, we inferred that establishment of an associated state, both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in others; and we have found that this is the form of conduct most emphatically termed good."[11] From this Mr. Spencer infers the contemporaneous achievement of the greatest totality of life in self, and this is supposed to vindicate the affiliation of Ethics upon Biology.

We have, however, already shown that the enlargement of the relations between the individual and the subjective environment is the special ethical relation, and that the enlargement of the relations between the individual and the objective environment is non-ethical, thus specialising the ethical interpretation of the enlargement of biological relations. We must also notice that Mr. Spencer's affiliation of biology with ethics relates to a remote ideal future and not to an actual present or a historic past. The biological law is the adaptation of the individual to its own special surroundings, and not the adaptation of its remote and changed descendant to its remote and changed environment. According to the fitness of the individual for supplying itself with food, whether of a vegetable or animal nature, and according to its capacities for, self preservation or defence, so will it be deemed biologically perfect. This is a relative, an individual standard, without reference to the subjective environment except in so far as this subjective environment subserves some internal function of sympathy. But even in this case the ethical relation is subordinate to the biological and is relative to the actual individual and not to a future ideal descendant. Moreover, the biological standard is always individual and singular and is not societarian.

We therefore come to the conclusion that the biological point of view does not furnish us with any ethical theory. The biological law is not individual completeness; it is individual suitability to environment. It is true, individual greatness may be the most complete life; but when that is not possible from the nature of the inherited organism, or from the nature of the surroundings, then the actually best thing, because relatively best, is conformity to the surroundings. The man who cannot adapt the environment to himself will prudently adapt himself to the environment. That is the biological law; whether it be the ethical law is another question. Abstract quantitative life may not be attainable either intellectually or in relation to the emotional surroundings. Therefore the more skilful adaptation having in view the particular functions of the organisms, (whether they include sympathies with the subjective surroundings, or not), is the biological law—although it may not be regarded as the ethical law.

Quantitative life, viewed biologically, i.e., individually, does not mean an ideal quantitative life, but the most that an individual organism can get. This depends upon the organism's own nature and capacities, and upon the nature of the environment. That some descendents some day may have other natures and other surroundings, is not to the point. The presence of subjective surroundings in the environment affects the individual according to the nature of his own feelings: it affects him in the first place according to his possession or non-possession of sympathy, and in the second place according to his position of command or subserviency.

If Biology takes cognisance of Ethics, it is from a prudential point of view alone. It means a recognition of the penalties of legal enactments or social laws. As a matter of calculation it takes account of the consequences of actions, and the conduct varies accordingly.

And if we are unable to accept the biological view as identical with the fundamentals of Ethics, so we are unable to accept the correlative that the preponderance of pleasurable feelings is indicative of the ethically correct life. For this criterion again is relative to the individual, and prescribes that course of conduct which to him is most largely pleasurable. It is only ethical when the surrounding conditions are such as to make the personally pleasurable harmonise with what is also pleasurable to the subjective environment—again showing the external or social origin and authority of the ethical imperative.

Before quitting this subject, it would-be as well to notice the narrow limitation assigned to the relation of feeling and function in the chapter on the biological view. Pleasure is there described as the correlative of life-sustaining acts, and Pain as the correlative of life-destructive acts; and we are told that under these conditions alone sentient creatures could evolve. This would apparently limit the range of the evolution of feeling to those classes of actions which are essential to the mere continuance of existence. If the growth of feeling is co-extensive with the growth of actions essential to existence, then Pleasure and Pain should be limited to the feelings involved in the supply of food, the escape from enemies, the pursuit of prey, &c. If to these should be added the larger, but as yet unexplained, view of Biology, which makes the individual a part only of a greater moving equilibrium—namely the species to which he belongs—then there will be an extension of feeling (that is, of Pleasure and Pain) to the acts requisite for the propagation of the race and the care of off-spring. But to these two classes of functions, human pleasures and pains are not limited. Beyond what may be termed the essential growth of feeling, there has been a super-growth of feeling concomitant with every extension of the correspondences between the inner relations and the outer relations. In the converse of the organism with its environment there has grown up a vast extension of knowledge as to external facts; and in the classification and reasoning upon these there has supervened a vast interest, which has been pleasurable quite apart from any life-sustaining necessity. So in the arts of life there has arisen a pleasure in the exercise of ingenuity and skill of manufacture, far above the requisites for bodily preservation. In the spread of æstheticism and the appreciation of the beautiful in Painting, Statuary, Architecture and Decoration generally, there has been manifested an amount of taste or feeling, utterly beyond any value it may have as "life-sustaining." Poetry, Music, Literature, along with all the other highest manifestations of civilization, are not the outcome of the necessities of existence, but a work super-imposed upon the poor and bare adaptations which are sufficient for simple existence. The same may be said of all those fine sympathies of man for man, of man for noble ideals of humanity, and even of the more homely love and good feeling of simple natures. Our friendships, our admirations, all that makes man something over and above the mere brute animals, is due to this larger growth of feeling beyond what is essential to the mere continuance of life—and if we should identify Pleasure and Pain merely with the conditions of life-sustaining and life-destructive acts, we should form a very inadequate conception of their place in human life. This of course is on the understanding that the biological law implies only self continuance or race continuance. That this is Mr. Spencer's original view is manifest from the fact that he theoretically derives life from the consideration of the laws of the moving equilibrium. But if we take the larger view, (which, however, is not derivable from the former), that life is correspondence between inner relations and outer relations, and is to be measured quantitatively by the increase of the number of correspondences, then of course the whole estimation of pleasures and pains is changed.

Under the latter view the organism enters into correspondence with all the individual objects of the environment, and not only has a present regard, but a past and a future interest. The scope of interest in the larger minds embraces long lines of history leading up and down the eras of development. In narrow measures of family or local interest, the social feeling has first risen, but as the framework of tribes or nations becomes knit together, so the social feelings acquire a wider interest. The merely biological interests have become enlarged by means of an internal growth, so as to have regard for other sentient existences. Altruism becomes a part of Egoism. We care for others, not by compulsion, but from natural growth of interest. Into the causes and incidents of this growth it is not necessary to enter. It is a simple fact of human nature that the pains and pleasures of others affect us much, and sometimes very keenly indeed.

Thus we find that the purely biological law, regarded as the adjustment of a moving equilibrium to its environment, derived from and exemplified in the physical moving equilibrium of the solar system, the spinning top, the steam engine, &c., does not afford us much insight into ethical theory, even if the equilibrations have a concomitant of feeling. In any approach from the purely biological towards the ethical, we are thrown for our explanations upon efficient subjective factors—upon the interaction of feeling organisms and sympathetic organisms.