Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/107

82 well illustrates our point. “Damn the public,” said the great servant and master of the traveling world. If he really did not say that, very likely there are those who would have meant it. And may the evolutionist condemn them solely on his own grounds?

Or finally, shall the doctrine retreat behind an ancient maxim, and state itself thus: “Evolution shows us what are the ultimate tendencies of acts; but no act ought to be committed which belongs to a class of acts whose general tendency is bad”? Would not this be a lamentable surrender of the whole position? Yet such a surrender is found in one or two passages of the book that is nowadays supposed best to represent the doctrine that we have been criticising in the foregoing, namely, in Mr. Spencer’s “Data of Ethics.” The physical facts of evolution are to give us our ideal. How? By telling us what in the long run, for the world at large, produces happiness. But if my individual happiness in the concrete case is hindered by what happens to be known to help in the long run towards the production of general happiness, how shall the general rule be applicable to my case? Mr. Spencer replies, in effect, that the concrete consequences for individuals must not be judged, but only the general tendency of the act. Happiness is the ultimate end; but in practice the “general conditions of happiness” must be the proximate end. But how is this clear? If I know in a given case what will make me happy, and if the means to my happiness are not the general ones at all, but, in this concrete case, something conflicting therewith, why should I not do as I please?