(a) As the end for present conduct: opposed to progress;
If this adaptation be adopted as the practical end for conduct under present conditions, and not merely as describing a far-off ideal to which we are supposed to be tending, man may continue to manifest a law of progress, but its initiation will be from external conditions. If "adaptation to environment" is consistently made the end, activity will have to be restricted to suiting one's powers to an external order of nature, and desire will have to be curbed when it does not bring the means of satisfaction along with it. "Bene latere" will again be an equivalent for "bene vivere," and happiness will have to be sought in withdrawal from the distractions of political life, and in the restriction of desire. It is strange to see the theory which is supposed to be based upon and to account for progress, returning in this way to an ideal similar to that in which the post-Aristotelian schools took refuge amid the decline of political and intellectual life in Greece. The end which Stoic and Epicurean alike sought in complete emancipation from the conditions of the external world,[200] is now, in more scientific phrase, made to consist in complete harmony with these conditions. But, in their practical results, the two theories would seem scarcely to differ. It is not astonishing, therefore, if this gospel of renunciation finds little favour among practical men in our day. It is seen that, if a man has not wants, he will make no efforts, and that, if he make no efforts, his condition can never be bettered. Thus social reformers have often found that the classes they have tried to elevate did not feel the evil of their lot as their benefactors saw it, and they have had to create wants before attempting to satisfy them.[201] And the practical tendency finds its counterpart in speculative opinion, so that, whereas Epicurus placed happiness in freedom from wants, modern hedonism usually considers a man the happier the more wants he has and is able to supply.[202]
does not fully represent the theory of evolution.
This practical tendency brings out the truth that it is not only by the subordination of self to circumstances, and the restriction of desire to present means of satisfaction, that the required harmony between outer and inner relations can be brought about. The other alternative is open: circumstances may be subordinated to self. For this latter alternative the theory of evolution seems really to leave room as much as for the former. It is excluded only when a one-sided emphasis is laid on the necessity of adaptation to environment. For evolution implies a gradually increasing heterogeneity of structure as the prelude to perfect agreement with circumstances: "the limit of heterogeneity towards which every aggregate progresses is the formation of as many specialisations and combinations of parts as there are specialised and combined forces to be met."[203] The end of evolution is a correspondence between inner and outer which is not produced by the easy method of both being very simple, but which is consistent with, and indeed requires, the complexity and heterogeneity produced in both by constant interaction.[204] The greater this complexity, the more filled with sensation, emotion, and thought life is, the greater is what Mr Spencer calls its "breadth." But, if "adaptation" is still regarded as expressing the end, then, the more perfect this adaptation is, the less room seems left for progress, and the end of human conduct is placed in a state of moving equilibrium in which action takes place without a jar and without disturbing the play of external conditions.[205]
(b) As describing the ultimate condition of life,
This end of "adaptation" is looked upon by Mr Spencer not as representing the conduct prescribed by morality in present circumstances, but as describing the ultimate condition of human life. As such, it is the foundation of his Absolute Ethics—that "final permanent code" which "alone admits of being definitely formulated, and so constituting ethics as a science in contrast with empirical ethics."[206] The "philosophical moralist," he tells us, "treats solely of the straight man. He determines the properties of the straight man; describes how the straight man comports himself; shows in what relationship he stands to other straight men; shows how a community of straight men is constituted. Any deviation from strict rectitude he is obliged wholly to ignore. It cannot be admitted into his premisses without vitiating all his conclusions. A problem in which a crooked man forms one of the elements is insoluble by him."[207]
complete correspondence with environment.
How, then, are we to conceive the nature or conduct of the "straight man"? To begin with, it is made clear that his dealings are only with straight men; for there are no "crooked men" in the ideal community. "The coexistence of a perfect man and an imperfect society is impossible; and could the two coexist the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical standard sought."[208] "The ultimate man is one in whom this process [of adaptation to the social state] has gone so far as to produce a correspondence between all the promptings of his nature and all the requirements of his life as carried on in society. If so, it is a necessary implication that there exists an ideal code of conduct formulating the behaviour of the completely-adapted man in the completely-evolved society." |Resultant absolute code of ethics| This is the code of Absolute Ethics, whose injunctions alone are "absolutely right," and which, "as a system of ideal conduct, is to serve as a standard for our guidance in solving, as well as we can, the problems of real conduct."[209] At the outset, we were required to "interpret the more developed by the less developed;"[210] the conclusion sets forth that the less developed is to be guided by the more developed, the real by the ideal. Now, ethics "includes all conduct which furthers or hinders, in either direct or indirect ways, the welfare of self or others."[211] Thus Absolute Ethics, like Relative Ethics, has two divisions, personal and social. |(α) lays down abstract principles for relation of individual to society;| As to the latter, Mr Spencer formulates certain principles of justice, negative beneficence, and positive beneficence,[212] which describe the harmonious co-operation of ideal men in the ideal state. These principles may perhaps be capable of a modified application to the present state of society, in which there is a conflict of interests: although Mr Spencer's representation of them—which is still, however, incomplete—suggests the belief that they are not so much guides which the ideal gives to the real, as suggestions for the construction of a Utopia gathered from the requirements of present social life. But, supposing the "harmonious co-operation" of individuals to be thus provided for, what is the personal end? and what, it might be added, is the social end, if society has any further function than regulating the relation of its units to one another? Absolute ethics does not seem to be able to give much guidance here. |(β) farther only defines end of conduct as adaptation;| "A code of perfect personal conduct," we are told, "can never be made definite."[213] There are various types of activities, all of which may belong to lives "complete after their kinds." But yet "perfection of individual life" does imply "certain modes of action which are approximately alike in all cases, and which, therefore, become part of the subject-matter of ethics." We cannot lay down "precise rules for private conduct," but only "general requirements." And these are: to maintain the balance between waste and nutrition, to observe a relation between activity and rest, to marry and have children.[214] This is "how the straight man comports himself." Apart, therefore, from the suggestion thrown out that a man's function may be the realisation of a type of activity complete after its kind—a suggestion to be considered in the sequel—all that we can say of the "completely-adapted man" would seem to be that he will be adapted to his circumstances.
(γ) cannot be shown to lead to happiness.