Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/598

 S7<S GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA. ing remains the primal source of authority. The various forms and instruments of government have grown up through processes in harmony with the general law. The two antithetical types of society are the militant and the industrial — the former implies compulsory co-operation under more or less despotic rule, with governmental assumption of functions belonging to the individual and a minimizing of individual initiative ; in the latter, govern- ment is reduced to a minimum and best conducted by representative agencies, public organizations are largely replaced by private organizations, the individual is freer and looks less to the state for protection and for aid. The fundamental conditions of the highest social development is the cessation of war. The ideas and sentiments at the basis of Ecclestiastical Institutions have been naturally derived from the ghost-theory already described. The goal of religious development is the final rejection of all anthropomorphic conceptions of the First Cause, until the harmony of religion and science shall be reached in the veneration of the Unknowable. The remaining parts of Mr. Spencer's Sociology will treat of Professional Institu- tions, Industrial Institutions, Linguistic Progress, Intel- lectual, Moral, and ^Esthetic Progress. The subject matter of ethics is the conduct termed good or bad. Conduct is the adjustment of acts to ends. The evolution of conduct is marked by increasing perfection in the adjustment of acts to the furtherance of individual life, the life of offspring, and social life. The ascription of ethical character to the highly evolved conduct of man in relation to these ends implies the fundamental assumption, that " life is good or bad according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling." The ideal of moral science is rational deduction : a rational utilitarianism can be attained only by the recognition of the necessary laws — physical, biological, psychological, and sociological — which condition the results of actions; among these the biological laws have been largely neglected in the past, though they are of the utmost importance as furnishing the link between life and happiness. The "psychological view," again, explains the origin of conscience. In the course of development