CHAPTER VII.
HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM.
1. Alliance of evolutionism and hedonism effected in two ways:
The alliance between Evolutionism and Hedonism may be arrived at from either of the two points of view which are being brought into connection: may be either an attempt to bring the hedonistic end into the definite region of law revealed by the evolution of life; or may result from the endeavour to give clearness and persuasiveness to an ethical end which evolution itself seems to point to.
(a) greatest happiness to be obtained by conforming to laws of life or of evolution;
The former point of view is represented in Mr Spencer's rejection of empirical utilitarianism, and substitution for it of a practical end which is not enunciated in terms of pleasure. Happiness is still regarded by him as the supreme end; but the tendency to it is not to be adopted as the end in practical morality. There are certain conditions to social equilibrium which "must be fulfilled before complete life—that is, greatest happiness—can be obtained in any society."[154] Thus the form of "rational utilitarianism" which he endeavours to establish "does not take welfare for its immediate object of pursuit," but "conformity to certain principles which, in the nature of things, causally determine welfare."[155] Having deduced "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," we are to recognise these deductions "as laws of conduct ... irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery."[156] The assumption is thus distinctly made that the tendency of life is to happiness, and that the laws of its evolution yield practical principles by following out which the greatest happiness may be obtained, without attempting the impossible task of estimating directly the felicific and infelicific results of conduct.
(b) ethical end of evolution interpreted by pleasure.
Starting with the evolutionist point of view, but with an opposite estimate of the relative value for practice of the ends supplied by evolutionism and by hedonism, a like identification of them might seem advisable. The "increase of life" to which evolution tends may be regarded as not merely an account of the actual process of existence, but as a principle of action for a conscious being. In this way some such ethical imperative as "Be a self-conscious agent in the evolution of the universe"[157] may be formulated. Yet as the "evolution of the universe" is a somewhat large conception, and its laws are not clear to every one, it may seem necessary that the end should be explained by translation into better-known terms. And this may be done if the conduct which promotes life most is, at the same time, the conduct which increases pleasure most. In this way, although the ultimate end is life, or, in vaster phrase, "the evolution of the universe," the practical end is pleasure. The moral value of conduct will depend on its tendency to increase the balance of pleasure over pain. The ethics of evolution will be reduced to hedonism.
This way of determining the evolutionist end is put forward as a logical possibility rather than as representing the views of any party. The contribution which the theory of evolution has to offer towards the determination of the ethical end, has not yet received that definite expression which would justify our passing by any logical interpretation of it, on the ground of its not being actually adopted by ethical writers. Yet it would seem that the above point of view is not altogether foreign to evolutionist morality. The preservation or development of the individual—or of the race—which is put forward as an expression both for the actual course of evolution and the subjective impulse corresponding to it, is often assumed to agree at each step with the desire for pleasure, and, when the stage of reflective consciousness is reached, to be identical with the pursuit of a maximum of pleasure.[158] In this way it is assumed that the preservation and development of life tend always to pleasure, and that the end or tendency of evolution is being fulfilled when the greatest pleasure is wisely sought. It is therefore necessary to inquire how far the correspondence between life and pleasure, or between development and pleasure, actually holds, that we may see whether it is possible for the one to take the place of the other in determining the end for conduct.
2. Evolutionist argument for concomitance of life and pleasure.