CHAPTER VIII.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW.

§ 48. Not for the human race only, hut for every race, there are laws of right living. Given its environment and its structure, and there is for each kind of creature a set of actions adapted in their kinds, amounts, and combinations, to secure the highest conservation its nature permits. The animal, like the man, has needs for food, warmth, activity, rest, and so forth; which must be fulfilled in certain relative degrees to make its life whole.

CHAPTER IX.

CRITICISMS AND EXPLANATIONS.

§ 56. Comparisons of the foregoing chapters with one another, suggest sundry questions which must be answered partially, if not completely, before anything can be done towards reducing ethical principles from abstract forms to concrete forms.

CHAPTER X.

THE RELATIVITY OF PAINS AND PLEASURES.

§ 63, A truth of cardinal importance as a datum of Ethics, which was incidentally referred to in the last chapter, must here be set forth at full length. I mean the truth that not only men of different races, but also different men of the same race, and even the same men at different periods of life, have different standards of happiness.

CHAPTER XI.

EGOISM VERSUS ALTRUISM.

§ 68. If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems of belief, self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.

CHAPTER XII.

ALTRUISM VERSUS EGOISM.

§ 75. If we define altruism as being all action which, in the normal course of things, benefits others instead of benefiting self, then, from the dawn of life, altruism has been no less essential than egoism. Though primarily it is dependent on egoism, yet secondarily egoism is dependent on it.

CHAPTER XIII.

TRIAL AND COMPROMISE.

§ 82. In the foregoing two chapters the case on behalf of Egoism and the case on behalf of Altruism have been stated. The two conflict; and we have now to consider what verdict ought to be given.

If the opposed statements are severally valid, or even if each of them is valid in part, the inference must be that pure egoism and pure altruism are both illegitimate. If the maxim—“Live for self,” is wrong, so also is the maxim—“Live for others.” Hence a compromise is the only possibility.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONCILIATION.

§ 92. As exhibited in the last chapter, the compromise between the claims of self and the claims of others seems to imply permanent antagonism between the two. The pursuit by each of his own happiness while paying due regard to the happiness of his fellows, apparently necessitates the ever-recurring question—how far must the one end be sought and how far the other: suggesting, if not discord in the life of each, still, an absence of complete harmony. This is not the inevitable inference however.

CHAPTER XV.

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE ETHICS.

§ 99. As applied to Ethics, the word “absolute” will by many be supposed to imply principles of right conduct that exist out of relation to life as conditioned on the Earth—out of relation to time and place, and independent of the Universe as now visible to us—“eternal” principles as they are called. Those, however, who recall the doctrine set forth in First Principles, will hesitate to put this interpretation on the word.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SCOPE OF ETHICS.

§ 107. At the outset it was shown that as the conduct with which Ethics deals, is a part of conduct at large, conduct at large must be understood before this part can be understood. After taking a general view of conduct, not human only but sub-human, and not only as existing but as evolving, we saw that Ethics has for its subject-matter the most highly-evolved conduct as displayed by the most highly-evolved being, Man—is a specification of those traits which his conduct assumes on reaching its limit of evolution.

APPENDIX TO PART I.

THE CONCILIATION.

[While searching for some memoranda, I have discovered the rough draft of a chapter belonging to this work. Whether it was that, when writing out at length the part of the argument it belongs to, I was led to put aside this chapter as having a form unfitting it for incorporation, or whether it was that I had mislaid it, I cannot now remember. The last supposition is, I think, the more probable; since this rough draft contains matter which, had it been before me, I should have embodied.