Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/341

Rh development of moral feeling? What can mere consciousness—apart from knowledge derived from external sources—tell us of our bodily constitution and development? It is occupied almost solely with sensations of pleasure and pain; it knows what are proximate causes of one or the other; but what the laws are that rule the human organization it is wholly ignorant. We have absolutely no consciousness of the nature of digestion or respiration; we only know in a rough way what creates disturbances in one region or the other, and what promotes comfort. Is it likely that we shall know any better from a simple questioning of our individual consciousness how our actions are produced, or what is their essential character and true significance? It seems to me that the feelings accompanying moral action are no safer guides to a true understanding of that action than the feelings accompanying digestion are to a true understanding of digestion. The objective method of study, as applied to human conduct, has this great advantage, that, while looking at things from the outside, and grasping the enchainement of cause and effect through all past time, it can also take account of the direct revelations of consciousness, so far as these seem to furnish any safe guidance. Mr. Spencer, it may be presumed, knows something personally of the inner life of humanity. He has written this treatise in full view of all that his personal experience has taught him of the motives by which men are swayed, and we must suppose that, in his mind at least, there is no contradiction between his philosophical theories and the teachings of life or the affirmations of consciousness. It is well to bear in mind that philosophers after all are men first and philosophers only afterward.

The adverse criticisms that have been offered upon Mr. Spencer's last work may be said to resolve themselves into two leading objections: first, that he does away with the essential distinction between right and wrong; and, second, that, for regulative purposes, his system is wholly unadapted to human wants. I propose to consider these points separately.

Let us, in the first place, try to understand clearly what Mr. Spencer's view is. Looking at conduct objectively he sees, as we advance from lower to higher forms in nature, an ever-increasing and improving adaptation, first to the preservation of individual life, and next to the preservation of the life of progeny. The lowest creatures in the animal kingdom possess little or no power of self-protection, and are therefore, broadly speaking, wholly at the mercy of their environment. With greater complexity of structure comes greater power of providing for wants and averting dangers; while the interests of the progeny become more and more a care to the parent animals. The time comes, in process of evolution, when the individual acquires the power of choice between opposite courses of action. One sense may prompt to a certain line of action, and another to a different one. Smell, for example, may attract to food, but sight may reveal an enemy of