3. Evolutionary Ethics
Herbert Spencer

Charles Darwin played a key role in the history of evolutionary ethics. It was his theory that convinced the general public that life had evolved. Furthermore, it was his emphasis on natural selection as the primary factor in evolution that survived as the central dogma of the theory of evolution. Since most versions of evolutionary ethics claimed to be, at a minimum, consistent with the theory of evolution, Darwin's perspective exerted—and has continued to exert—considerable influence on ethical formulations based on evolution. Darwin's discussion of the origin of the moral sentiment, moreover, was an invitation to consider ethics from an evolutionary point of view. It was secular and compatible with many middle-class notions. But the approach proved to be limited. Most serious was its failure to resolve two of the main issues in traditional moral philosophy: sanction for individual action, and justification for the foundations of ethics. Darwin, Clifford, and Stephen saw in evolution a secular explanation that supported their British, middle-class morality. They assumed that the long course of human history had resulted in moral progress and that the British gentleman was among the highest expressions of this moral development. The virtues of middle-class Britain were assumed to be the natural products of centuries of evolution from savage times. But however much they may have positioned themselves within the mainstream of moral opinion, they did not articulate a philosophy that adequately resolved central questions that moral philosophy was expected to address. Moreover, the position was ambiguous about the extent to which adaptation was the criterion of contemporary moral value. And if, as was the case for Darwin, some of the highest moral sentiments were not adaptive, then on what grounds could they be justified? Why should individuals, or society, protect animals and keep them from needless suffering?

Spencer's Ethics

Darwin and those who claimed to be applying his ideas of ethics were not the only ones approaching the subject from an evolutionary perspective. The first episode in the history of evolutionary ethics owed as much to Herbert Spencer as it did to Charles Darwin. Spencer's extensive publications, in fact, had a wider and more popular impact at the time. Alexander Bain wrote concerning Spencer's Data of Ethics (1879), "From this time forward, the Ethics of Evolution occupied a place in the standing controversy respecting the true foundation of an ethical system."^[1] And in his review of that work, Bain claimed Spencer was the first to work out a new doctrine of ethics based on evolution.^[2]

Spencer was more interested in ethics than was Darwin. Whereas for Darwin, man's moral sentiment had been an interesting problem in natural history, for Spencer, the origin and validity of morality was central to his entire philosophical system. Spencer stated in his Autobiography that his early writings began with examining a "politico-ethical" question, and although the issue led him to many related topics, he always returned to it, albeit in increasingly more advanced forms.^[3] Spencer's career has been correctly characterized by historians as a quest for the formulation of a new set of absolute rules of conduct and a crusade for them.^[4] These rules, based on man's moral sense, proscribed individual conduct and defined the limits of the state.

The desire for a complete understanding of the moral basis of society certainly led Spencer very far afield: to a study of the physical, psychological, and social evolution of man. Spencer started his writing career with a consideration of how man ought to live, and then, with breathtaking ambition, he set out a cosmic survey that not only adumbrated the historical evolution of the solar system, the earth, and the earth's inhabitants as well as the psychic, social, and political development of man but also attempted to uncover the underlying process that was responsible for that evolution, before returning to the topic of proper living.

[1] Alexander Bain, Autobiography (London: Longmans, Green, 1904): 341.

[2] Alexander Bain, "The Data of Ethics," Mind 4, no. 16 (1879): 569.

[3] Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography (New York: D. Appleton, 1904), 2: 321-322.

[4] David Wiltshire, The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978): 39.

Social Statics; or The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed was Spencer's first book.^[5] In it he laid out the central theme that provided him with a framework for his prolific outpouring in the next half century: the construction of a "strictly scientific morality."^[6] His main interest was to establish the intellectual foundations of a moral society, and he viewed the subject of ethics from that perspective. Although sympathetic with much in the utilitarian tradition, Spencer explicitly rejected contemporary formulations that "the good" could be known by calculating what would bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Such calculations, he thought, were too shortsighted and psychologically unrealistic. Rather, he contended that "the moral law of society, like its other laws, originates in some attribute of the human being."^[7] But what did we know of this attribute, man's moral sense? General introspection, he stated, could not provide a satisfactory understanding of it or the basis of morality, for humans were too variable and imperfect. What was necessary was to derive rationally a first principle to serve as a foundation.

His derivation was constructed by asserting a set of assumptions from which he drew a desired conclusion. The argument ran as follows.

God wills man's happiness. Man's happiness can only be produced by the exercise of his faculties. Then God wills that he should exercise his faculties. But to exercise his faculties he must have liberty to do all that his faculties naturally impel him to do. Then God intends he should have that liberty. Therefore he has a right to that liberty.

This however, is not the right of one but of all. All are endowed with faculties. All are bound to fulfill the Divine will by exercising them. All therefore must be free to do those things in which the exercise of them consists. That is, all must have rights to liberty of action.^[8]

But a problem was obvious immediately. Unrestrained activity could lead to a clash of desires, where the fulfillment of one indi-

[5] Social Statics (London: John Chapman, 1851) is often cited as having been published in 1850. It did, indeed, appear in December 1850 but carried an 1851 publication date. Spencer's writings went through several editions; however, there is no standard modern edition. Citations are from the authorized American edition (New York: D. Appleton, 1888), which was reissued numerous times.

[6] Spencer, Social Statics, 13.

[7] Ibid., 29.

[8] Ibid., 93.

vidual's capabilities interfered with the exercise of another's. The first principle, therefore, as derived from his assumptions and modified to avoid contradiction, emerged as "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."^[9]

Spencer also provided a secondary derivation, based on human nature, of his first principle. In this argument he stated that "there exists in man what may be termed an instinct of personal rights."^[10] This "selfish instinct, leading each man to assert and defend his own liberty of action,"^[11] was balanced by a respect for the rights of others. Drawing on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Spencer noted that humans had the mental ability to imagine themselves in another's place. This "sympathy," according to Smith, was the root of our moral sense.^[12] For Spencer, it was a key component, but more in the sense of a balancing sentiment that accounted for our sense of justice. Through a "sympathetic affection" of another's personal rights we come to respect the claims of other persons. On a more refined level, sympathy also was the root of our sense of beneficence, that is, the choice of actions that went beyond the recognition of the rights of others and attempted to increase (directly or indirectly) the happiness of others (suppressing a gratuitously sarcastic remark to a colleague or teenaged off-spring, for example).

As a subeditor of The Economist during the writing of Social Statics, Spencer was sufficiently in touch with the day-to-day world to recognize that man's moral sentiment had not produced a just and beneficent society. But that did not disturb or surprise him. Man was imperfect. Morality was a guide to how man ought ideally to act. As man progressed his actions would be closer to the ideal. Spencer optimistically asserted that all of nature tended toward greater, ultimately complete, adaptability. This was true of the relationship of animals to their surrounding environment, and it was true in the mental and moral adaptation of man to the social environment. That man was not yet completely adapted merely reflected that "he yet partially retains the characteristics

[9] Ibid., 121.

[10] Ibid., 110.

[11] Ibid.

[12] See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in The Works of Adam Smith, vol. 1, reprint of 1811-1812 edition (London: T. Cadell) (Aalen: Otto Zeller, 1963). Also see T. D. Campbell, Adam Smith's Science of Morals (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971).

that adapted him for an antecedent state. The respects in which he is not fitted to society are the respects in which he is fitted for his original predatory life. His primitive circumstances required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his own; his present circumstances require that he should not do so."^[13] The future would see the emergence of the ideal man, "as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die."^[14] This point, that there was a gulf between what he later called "Absolute" and "Relative" ethics, served as a convenient strategy to propose a set of ideal principles that, if not practical, could still serve as a guide to action. "Right principles of action become practicable," he wrote, "only as man becomes perfect; or rather, to put the expressions in proper sequence—man becomes perfect, just in so far as he is able to obey them."^[15]

Having established to his satisfaction a suitable foundation to serve as a guide to action, Spencer devoted the remainder of Social Statics to elaborating his social views. He discussed at length the rights of the individual: use of property, free speech, women's political rights, children's rights.^[16] He also described in detail the limits of the state and in so doing expressed his distaste for the patronizing attitude of the middle class toward the working class as well as his strong objection to government encroachment on private liberties in the form of poor laws, public health proposals, and colonial policy.

For a number of years after publishing Social Statics, Spencer's writings focused on broader issues than how man ought to live. The vast system of philosophy that he constructed earned him the reputation of being the synthesizer of his generation's ideas. And in important ways he was. Although his knowledge of contemporary and past writers was unsystematic and although he made a point of not reading (but nonetheless discussing) authors with whom he disagreed, he was broadly informed on an enormous range of topics. His years in journalism provided him with extensive factual information in economics and politics. He made use of the large library of his club, the Athenaeum, and, perhaps most

[13] Spencer, Social Statics, 77.

[14] Ibid., 79.

[15] Ibid., 51.

[16] Spencer later altered some of his early liberal opinions on women. See Nancy Paxton, George Eliot and Herbert Spencer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991): 7.

valuable, he frequented several brilliant, intellectual circles where he spent hours in conversation with friends and acquaintances with whom he conducted extensive correspondence. The list of his associates was impressive; it included John Stuart Mill, Thomas Henry Huxley, Charles Darwin, Joseph Dalton Hooker, George Henry Lewes, George Eliot, and John Tyndall. Many of his intellectual companions, such as Huxley, were personal friends. Spencer moved to John's Wood in 1858 in large part to be near Huxley with whom he took regular Sunday walks.

Spencer was also a member of the X-Club, a small dinner group that was a major political power in the world of British science.^[17] At its monthly meetings Spencer was kept abreast of all that was intellectually fashionable in the world of science and culture. To a modern reader, Spencer's name looks somewhat out of place on the list of the nine members of the X-Club, as the other eight are eminent scientists.^[18] All but Spencer were members of the Royal Society and held office in either the Royal Society or one of the other major scientific organizations. But Spencer was a valued member of the club, and his subsequent fall from fashion in the twentieth century should not cause us to underestimate his standing in the nineteenth.

Spencer's originality lay in his ability to combine in a readily readable (although not necessarily scintillating) form many of the concepts from others' writings. He did more than just compile knowledge. His achievement was a synthesis that appealed to those who were searching for a new scientific framework. As important as this achievement was, we should not lose sight of the basic goal of his work, which was to construct a new ethical vision for his contemporaries. It was no coincidence that his first book was a statement of an ethical position to serve as a guide for action and that his last, the culminating section of his Synthetic Philosophy, Principles of Ethics, was an elaboration of that statement.

The intervening volumes between Social Statics and Principles

[17] See Roy MacLeod, "The X-Club: A Social Network of Science in Late-Victorian England," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 24 (1969): 305-322; J. Vernon Jensen, "The X-Club: Fraternity of Victorian Scientists," British Journal for the History of Science 5, no. 17 (1970): 63-72; and Ruth Barton, "'An Influential Set of Chaps': The X-Club and Royal Society Politics 1864-85," British Journal for the History of Science 23 (1990): 53-81.

[18] The members were Edward Frankland, Thomas Archer Hirst, John Tyndall, Thomas Henry Huxley, George Busk, John Lubbock, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and William Spottiswoode.

of Ethics surveyed the broad terrain of the physical world, biology, man, mind, and society. First Principles, the opening volume of his sweeping series, A System of Synthetic Philosophy, established a general framework from which to organize not only ethics but knowledge in general. The key to such a unification, he believed, was the evolution principle, a principle inspired by his understanding of the ideas of the great German embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer. According to Spencer, evolution, in its most general sense, was a process that integrated matter and dissipated motion during which the matter "passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity."^[19] The direction of evolution was away from homogeneity, which he took to be an unstable equilibrium, to a more stable heterogeneity. It was his contention that this general principle, which drew on biological insights as well as current ideas in physics (thermodynamics), united all the separate branches of knowledge and could serve to synthesize them into a single natural process. The ultimate cause or nature of this principle was unknowable. Recognition of the phenomena of development in all areas of nature, however, sufficed as a justification for believing in evolution as universal.

The process of evolution led to greater diversity and individualization. Although First Principles stressed the evolution of the physical universe, Spencer was explicit that in addition to a cosmic evolution, there was a biological, a psychological, and a social evolution. Each of these evolutions was progressive in the sense that higher grades of evolution were more adaptive. Spencer's conception of evolution, in contrast to Darwin's, was not only broader but goal directed, self-corrective, and optimistic in that it assumed improvement and progress over time.

After setting out a general evolutionary philosophy, Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy covered biology, psychology, and sociology.^[20]

[19] Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 4th ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1898): 407. The first edition was published in installments between 1860 and 1862.

[20] Spencer published the first edition of his Principles of Psychology in 1855 before beginning the publication of his Synthetic Philosophy. His intent was to resolve the debate between J. S. Mill and William Whewell, that is, between empiricist and Kantian epistemologies. Spencer's resolution, which he believed was one of his most important contributions to philosophy, was founded on an evolutionary approach that traced the development of mind as successive adaptations to the environment. Mill's contention that all knowledge ultimately came from experience and Whewell's contrary view that knowledge was structured by a priori necessary truths could both be accommodated by Spencer's synthesis. Spencer claimed that we were justified in holding a commonsense realism because it was the result of a long evolutionary process of successive adaptations whereby the mind adapted to its environment.

The First Principles of his Synthetic Philosophy established a broad evolutionary philosophy into which his psychology smoothly fit. Spencer expanded and incorporated the second edition of Principles of Psychology (1870-1872) into his Synthetic Philosophy.

That is, after showing in his First Principles how the law of evolution applied in the physical world, he went on to demonstrate its unifying strength in the biological, mental, and social worlds. His method was basically similar in these volumes. He would start with a "Data of . . ." in which he would summarize the general phenomena of the subject; from there he would draw some inductive generalizations; and finally he would conclude with a synthesis from which the earlier facts could be deduced. At least, in principle. Even a cursory reading reveals that his phenomena were limited and carefully chosen, the inductions rather superficially generated, and the grand synthesis really not much more than a "causal" explanation, which was merely a translation into evolutionary language of the main generalizations.

Although Spencer's writings on cosmology, biology, psychology, and sociology were united, albeit in a labored manner, by his evolutionary philosophy, the driving goal—indeed, what underlay the entire system—was his vision of establishing a foundation for proper and just conduct. Central to his thought was the inviolability of the individual, a faith in the benefits of industrial society, and an abhorrence of war.

The importance Spencer attached to the moral dimension of his writings was reflected in the history of their publication. His prospectus of 1860, proposing a system of philosophy, consisted of five sections: first principles, principles of biology, principles of psychology, principles of sociology, and principles of morality.^[21] Spencer had some concern whether his health would allow him to complete all the projected volumes, and in 1878, he interrupted work on the Principles of Sociology to tackle the concluding section of his system of philosophy. He published Data of Ethics in 1879 and in its preface explained his deviation from the originally proposed plan.

[21] The prospectus was reprinted in the preface to the first edition of the First Principles and continued to be reprinted in subsequent editions.

I have been led thus to deviate from the order originally set down, by the fear that persistence in conforming to it might result in leaving the final work of the series unexecuted. Hints, repeated of late years with increasing frequency and distinctness, have shown me that health may permanently fail, even if life does not end, before I reach the last part of the task I have marked out for myself. This last part of the task it is, to which I regard all the preceding parts as subsidiary. Written as far back as 1842, my first essay, consisting of letters on The Proper Sphere of Government, vaguely indicated what I conceived to be certain general principles of right and wrong in political conduct; and from that time onwards my ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and wrong in conduct at large, a scientific basis.^[22]

Despite his fears, Spencer continued to live and write for quite some time. Data of Ethics was later expanded and incorporated into Principles of Ethics. Principles of Sociology was completed as well.

It was in his Data of Ethics and his more fully developed Principles of Ethics that Spencer set a moral foundation for his system of thought and a moral vision for his contemporaries. The basic approach that he took in this moral philosophy, however, had changed little from his statements in Social Statics. He still relied on the concept of sympathy, the distinction between Absolute and Relative ethics, and his optimistic vision of an ever-improving society. The main difference between his early and late moral writings, aside from the greater detail of the latter, was that he now grounded his ethics in an evolutionary philosophy, or perhaps more accurately, he now attempted to demonstrate how his moral philosophy was supported by a consistent and general systematic evolutionary philosophy. In Social Statics, Spencer claimed that God willed human happiness and that God was the source of man's moral sense. Although Spencer's writings continued to be amenable to a religious reading and were interpreted by many in that light, he substituted an evolutionary philosophy for his earlier deism and shifted to a fully naturalistic approach. Spencer pointed out the shift between his early and later ethics in the preface to the

[22] The preface to Data of Ethics was reprinted in subsequent editions of the enlarged Principles of Ethics. See Principles of Ethics, 4th ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), I: xiii. The essay Spencer refers to was a set of letters originally published in 1842 in the newspaper Nonconformist in which he set out many of the ideas that he later published in his Social Statics.

fourth part of Principles of Ethics (1891): "What there was in my first book of supernaturalistic interpretation has disappeared, and the interpretation has become exclusively naturalistic—that is, evolutionary."^[23] Spencer believed that there existed a pressing need for his naturalistic ethics. He wrote in the preface to Data of Ethics, "Now that moral injunctions are losing authority given their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative."^[24]

Spencer argued that conduct had evolved as part of the general evolutionary process.

We have to enter on the consideration of moral phenomena as phenomena of evolution; being forced to do this by finding that they form a part of the aggregate of phenomena which evolution has wrought out. If the entire visible universe has been evolved—if the solar system as a whole, the earth as a part of it, the life in general which the earth bears, as well as that of each individual organism—if the mental phenomena displayed by all creatures, up to the highest, in common with the phenomena presented by aggregates of these highest—if one and all conform to the laws of evolution; then the necessary implication is that those phenomena of conduct in these highest creatures with which Morality is concerned, also conform.^[25]

Spencer was able to substitute an evolutionary process for God as the foundation of his ethics rather easily, for he had been preparing the ground for years. In his biology and psychology, he had traced the adaptations of organisms to their environment and had shown that in organisms pain was correlative with injurious actions and pleasure was correlative with beneficial ones. There was, therefore, a natural evolutionary basis for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

In Principles of Ethics, he maintained his earlier postulate that happiness was the end goal of individuals by equating it with pleasure. Similarly, he retained his position that sympathy was responsible for part of the moral sentiment. But instead of viewing sympathy as a human faculty given to us by God, he explained it as the natural outcome of psychological and social evolution related to perceptions of pleasure and pain: "Pleasurable consciousness is aroused on witnessing pleasure" and "a painful consciousness is

[23] Spencer, Principles of Ethics, 2: x.

[24] Ibid., 1: xiv.

[25] Ibid., 63.

aroused on witnessing pain."^[26] Spencer had given a naturalistic origin of sympathy in his Principles of Psychology, tracing the sentiment back to "gregarious animals." Lack of intelligence limited the extent of sympathy in subhuman animals, but in man the potential was greater and had developed relative to social circumstances, first in a family setting and then in larger social groups.^[27]

In his later ethical writings Spencer continued to insist on his earlier distinction between ethical choices that individuals made affecting themselves but no others and those choices having an impact on one's fellowmen. With regard to the latter, he elaborated on those actions that concerned the rights of others, what he called justice, and those that were prompted by our sympathetic desire for others' happiness, what he called beneficence.

And, perhaps most important, Spencer continued to insist on the distinction between Absolute and Relative ethics. The difference was critical, for he believed that it allowed him to resolve the contradictions between ideal behavior and practical action, thereby providing him with a foundation for ethics that avoided the inconsistencies and inadequacies of other naturalistic ethical theories. It also took his ethical discussion beyond merely accounting for the origins of the moral sentiment to serving as a guide for proper conduct. Although for him, Absolute ethics applies only to "the completely adapted man in the completely evolved society," they nonetheless "serve as a standard for our guidance in solving, as well as we can, the problems of real conduct."^[28] For example, in cases of what Spencer called "negative beneficence," that is, in moral situations where one's action had no direct bearing on another's welfare but nonetheless resulted in a negative influence on another's happiness—what we commonly call "unkind" actions. In such cases, Absolute ethics guided us "by enforcing the consideration that inflicting more pain than is necessitated by proper self-regard, or by desire for another's benefit, or by the maintenance of a general principle, is unwarranted."^[29]

[26] Ibid., 244.

[27] Chapter 5 of the final section in the second volume of the Principles of Psychology is devoted to "Sociality and Sympathy." Spencer explored this topic in an article entitled "Morals and Moral Sentiments," first published in the Fortnightly Review (April 1871) and later reprinted in his Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1878).

[28] Spencer, Principles of Ethics, 1: 275.

[29] Ibid., 287.

Spencer had a significantly different approach to the moral sentiment than Darwin. Contrasting the two is somewhat complicated because they influenced one another.^[30] Darwin, however, was primarily concerned to uncover the origin of the moral sense in order to show that the major distinguishing feature between man and the brutes could be encompassed by his biological theory. Spencer, although he engaged in the similar task of showing how the moral sentiment had come into being, was more interested in establishing the validity of this intuition. For by so doing, he was providing a scientific morality for his time and a justification for his social opinions.

Spencer and Darwin differed in other basic ways as well. Whereas Darwin thought that in animals some habits could gradually become instincts and that some acquired physical and mental traits could be transmitted, Spencer viewed life as a continuous adjustment of internal relations to external conditions. That is, Spencer was more Lamarckian than Darwin. Although Spencer denied that the future could be predicted in a specific manner, he was more teleological in outlook than Darwin, and he held that the action of natural selection was inadequate to explain evolution.^[31] Rather, the organism, or in the case of man, the social group, actively adapted and the fittest survived.

Darwin's vision of evolution was less fixed than Spencer's. In Spencer's mind the outcome of social evolution was clear: a utopian, industrial society in which mutual aid replaced competition as the motive social force and in which the greatest individual freedom possible prevailed. Although Spencer's later writings reflected a gloomy vision of the immediate future, his overall vision never faltered. If it was true that a wave of militarism was spreading across Europe and threatened to undo many of the progressive advances of the nineteenth century and the specter of socialism, which he considered "biologically fatal" and "psychologically absurd,"^[32] haunted Western nations, Spencer nonetheless was confi-

[30] For an interesting discussion of the relationship, see John C. Greene's essay, "Darwinism as a World View," in his Science, Ideology, and World View, and Valerie A. Haines, "Spencer, Darwin, and the Question of Reciprocal Influence," Journal of the History of Biology 24, no. 3 (1991): 409-431.

[31] Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1: 615.

[32] Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, 3d ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1898), 3: 582 (first published between 1876 and 1897).

dent about the ultimate outcome. In the conclusion to Principles of Sociology he stated,

If the process of evolution which, unceasing throughout past time, has brought life to its present height, continues throughout the future, as we cannot but anticipate, then, amid all the rhythmical changes in each society, amid all the lives and deaths of nations, amid all the supplantings of race by race, there will go on that adaptation of human nature to the social state which began when savages first gathered together into hordes for mutual defence—an adaptation finally complete.^[33]

Spencer did not think that a single higher society would come to replace all existing ones. He tempered his earlier optimistic view that the imperfect must disappear in time and that progress was a social necessity.^[34] Rather, in time different geographic regions would harbor societies of varying degrees of sophistication and the natural competition among societies would leave some inferior "races" in less desirable locations. The great societies of the future, however, would progress unhindered. Spencer reiterated his belief expressed fifty years previously that "the ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature by all others doing the like."^[35] In contrast, Darwin had little to say about the future of man, nor did he predict any particular future political or economic state. Although he held views about his own society, many, in fact, that could be categorized as "Social Darwinism,"^[36] he did not advocate a political or ethical vision in his publications.

Darwin and Spencer wrote quite differently about evolutionary ethics, but often no distinction was made by writers who commented on the topic in the nineteenth century. Some analyses were careful to distinguish Darwin's biology from his speculations on the origin of the moral sense, and some pointed out the selectionist thrust of Darwin's writings from the more Lamarckian cast of

[33] Ibid., 608.

[34] Spencer, Social Statics, 83.

[35] Spencer, Principles of Sociology, 3: 611.

[36] See John C. Greene's essay, "Darwin as a Social Evolutionist," in his Science, Ideology, and World View.

Spencer's. But more often, Darwin and Spencer were lumped together, to the dissatisfaction of each. In time, however, the logical differences were given more weight, and in the twentieth century the two positions are generally clearly distinguished.^[37] Their differences became more obvious partly due to the decline of the scientific status of the Lamarckism on which Spencer relied. With the violent rejection of Lamarckism in the Anglo-American scientific world of the twentieth century, Spencer's synthesis lost its scientific underpinning, and this loss contributed to the obsolescence of his writings. It would be misleading, however, to ascribe the decline of Spencer's reputation solely to external factors like changes in biological theory. Of equal importance were the strong criticisms aimed at his works for their lack of intellectual rigor and their largely ad hoc arguments. His moral conclusions might have been consistent with his premises, but they hardly followed deductively from them as he claimed. We will examine more closely the philosophical arguments against his evolutionary ethics in chapter 5. It will suffice here to note that Spencer's loss of popularity resulted from both the devastating attacks on his work by philosophers and the undermining of his assumptions by biologists.

Spencerian Evolutionary Ethics

Before his eclipse, Spencer's writings were viewed by many as part of a set of texts that might serve as a foundation for a new moral vision. Even some of those who rejected Spencer's overall philosophy used portions of his writings to break away from traditional approaches to man and ethics. We have seen already that Leslie Stephen, although he rejected Spencer's emphasis on the individual, was deeply impressed by his work. Alfred Barratt at Oxford was also inspired by Spencer. Although critical of Social Statics, Barratt nonetheless borrowed heavily from Spencer for his Physical Ethics or the Science of Action: An Essay (1869). This stillborn treatise attempted to establish the first principles of a new science

[37] For example, Robert Richards's Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories carefully distinguishes the two, as does Michael Ruse's Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), and Derek Freeman's "The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer," Current Anthropology 15, no. 3 (1974): 211-221.

of ethics on a psychological understanding of the origin of moral sentiments and copiously quoted Spencer's psychology and physics.

The importance of a new foundation for ethics was widely felt in the late nineteenth century, and a frequently encountered opinion was that without an acceptable solution to the "crisis in morals," social chaos might ensue. There were many more substantial reasons to fear social unrest at the time, but the crisis in morals was seen by intellectuals as a major source of instability. William Henry Hudson, a writer and professor of English who served for a time as Spencer's secretary, stated in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, "The supremacy of the older, theologically-derived sanctions of conduct is breaking down; and the danger, immediate and serious is, lest they should be generally cast away as valueless and inefficient before any other sanctions are established to take their place."^[38]

Ironically, Spencer's two most well known popularizers both interpreted his writings in religious terms. In spite of Spencer's own secularism, his ideas were portrayed in the guise of a revitalized Christianity.^[39] In Britain, Henry Drummond made his clarion call the unity of science and religion. He held that "evolution and Christianity have the same Author, the same end, and the same spirit."^[40] Drummond was influenced by Spencer's ideas on the progress of man, in particular, the view that the struggle for existence in human history will be replaced by altruism. Like the natural theologians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Drummond believed that moral lessons could be read in nature. He went even further by asserting, "The position we have been led to take up is not that the Spiritual Laws are analogous to the Natural Laws, but that they are the same Laws. It is not a question of analogy but of Identity."^[41] Unlike the earlier and static natural

[38] William Henry Hudson, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (London: Chapman and Hall, 1897): 147.

[39] James Moore, in his Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), examines a variety of Christian evolutionary positions and provides an excellent background for understanding the popularizers of Spencer.

[40] Henry Drummond, The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1894): 438. Also see George Allen Smith, The Life of Henry Drummond (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899).

[41] Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1883): 11.

theology of William Paley, Drummond's natural history envisioned the progressive realization of a divine plan in the dynamic evolution of life on this planet.

Similarly, John Fiske, the leading popularizer of evolution in the United States, developed as the keystone of his philosophy what he took to be the religious aspects of Spencer's philosophy. Fiske contributed to his mentor's system by setting out a hypothesis on the origin of moral and social evolution of man based on the prolonged infancy of humans.^[42] But Fiske interpreted Spencer in a manner wholly at odds with his secular philosophy, a tendency that deepened with time.^[43] Although Fiske prided himself on what he considered his significant and original scientific contribution to the evolutionary origin of the moral sense, he emphasized repeatedly that evolution had to be seen in terms of God's immanence in the world and of man's destiny. Ethical intuition ultimately came from God and could not be treated as naturalistic. At a farewell banquet for Spencer on November 9, 1882, in New York City's Delmonico's, Fiske told his illustrious audience, "Mr. Spencer's work on the side of religion will be seen to be no less important than his work on the side of science, when once its religious implications shall have been fully and consistently unfolded."^[44] An after-dinner speech was not the place to elaborate on religious implications, but he did indicate briefly that all religions accepted some divine power and accepted

that men ought to do certain things, and ought to refrain from doing certain other things; and that the reason why some things are wrong to

[42] Fiske first set out his hypothesis in 1873 in an article entitled "The Progress from Brute to Man," North American Review 117: 251-319. Later he incorporated it into his Cosmic Philosophy. See H. Burnell Pannill, The Religious Faith of John Fiske (Durham: Duke University Press, 1957); George R. Winston, John Fiske (New York: Twayne, 1972); Milton Berman, John Fiske: The Evolution of a Popularizer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961); and Jacob Lester, "John Fiske's Philosophy of Science: The Union of Science and Religion Through the Principle of Evolution," Ph.D. dissertation, Oregon State University, 1979.

[43] Fiske's most mature statement on science and religion was in his Through Nature to God (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), where he stated, "Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to Man, I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the Everlasting Reality of Religion (191)."

[44] Edward Livingston Youmans, ed., Herbert Spencer on the Americans and the Americans on Herbert Spencer. Being a Full Report of His Interview, and of the Proceedings of the Farewell Banquet of Nov. 11, 1882 (New York: D. Appleton, 1883): 52. The title of this work is misleading. Spencer left the United States on November 11; the banquet had taken place two days earlier.

do and other things are right to do is in some mysterious but very real way connected with the existence and nature of this divine Power, which reveals itself in every great and every tiny thing, without which not a star courses in its mighty orbit, and not a sparrow falls to the ground.^[45]

Fiske went on to say,

The doctrine of evolution asserts, as the widest and deepest truth which the study of Nature can disclose to us, that there exists a Power to which no limit in time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenomena of the universe, whether they be what we call material or what we call spiritual phenomena, are manifestations of this infinite and eternal Power. Now, this assertion, which Mr. Spencer has so elaborately set forth as a scientific truth—nay, as the ultimate truth of science, as the truth upon which the whole structure of human knowledge philosophically rests—this assertion is identical with the assertion of an eternal Power, not ourselves, that forms the speculative basis of all religions.^[46]

Fiske was expanding on Spencer's concept that the ultimate, or first cause, of nature was unknowable. Spencer, in his First Principles, had suggested that in both religion and science an ultimate principle, the Unknowable, was a mystery into which the human mind could not penetrate. For him, this shared skeptical conclusion was a possible basis of reconciliation, and he continued to insist on it throughout his later writings.^[47] Fiske, however, reified Spencer's Unknowable into a theistic God.

Spencer, who did not get to talk at length with Fiske after the dinner, wrote to Fiske shortly afterward.

I wanted to say how successful and how important I thought was your presentation of the dual aspect, theological and ethical, of the Evo-

[45] Ibid., 53.

[46] Ibid., 55.

[47] Spencer carried on a debate with Frederic Harrison, one of Britain's leading positivists, on the reconciliation of evolutionary philosophy and religion. Harrison claimed that Spencer's philosophy led to a negation of religion, and Spencer strongly reasserted his view that his philosophy did not negate religion as he understood it. The debate consisted of a series of articles in Nineteenth Century and the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1880s. The articles were collected and published by Gail Hamilton as The Insuppressible Book: A Controversy Between Herbert Spencer and Frederic Harrison (Boston: S. E. Cassino, 1885). On Harrison, see Martha S. Vogeler, Frederic Harrison: The Vocations of a Positivist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).

lution doctrine. It is above all things needful that the people should be impressed with the truth that the philosophy offered to them does not necessitate a divorce from their inherited conceptions concerning religion and morality, but merely a purification and exaltation of them. It was a great point to enunciate this view on an occasion ensuring wide distribution through the press; and if Youmans effects, as he hopes through the medium of a pamphlet reporting the proceedings, a still wider distribution, much will be gained for the cause.^[48]

Spencer appreciated Fiske's efforts to bring his ideas to the general American public. And the way in which Fiske claimed that Spencer's ideas revitalized religion fit the time. But Fiske was moving in a very different direction. Spencer regarded religious sanction as an early stage in the evolution of man's ethical systems. Although he maintained a belief in the existence of the Unknowable, which could inspire a sense of awe, Spencer was emphatic in his opposition to any theology, ritual, or doctrine.^[49] What was left for religion was the recognition of an unknowable cause behind appearances and a realization that earlier religious forms were the crude steps of man to adapt to an ever more complex social life. As for ethics, Spencer held that in time religion had to give way to a more satisfying rational and ideal basis for morality. Spencer could accept how someone like Fiske might smooth the path to a naturalistic interpretation for someone coming from a traditional background by explaining that the new philosophy was a refinement and extension of former orthodox beliefs. The reinterpretation of his work, however, to suggest the existence of an immanent presence of God in the world, the reality of an immortal soul, or value of worship was completely contrary to his ideas. He wrote to Edward Youmans in 1883 concerning a work by Drummond that was similar to Fiske's.

I lately took up a book at the Athenaeum entitled Natural Law in the Spiritual World, by Henry Drummond. I found it to be in considerable measure an endeavour to press me into the support of a qualified the-

[48] John Spencer Clark, The Life and Letters of John Fiske (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), 2: 264.

[49] Bernard Lightman's The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987) has a good discussion of Spencer's agnosticism. Spencer's solution to the long-standing conflict between science and religion through the recognition of a shared ultimate power resembles his equally superficial resolution of the philosophic debate between empiricism and Kantianism (see n. 20).

ology, by showing the harmony between certain views of mine and alleged spiritual laws. It is an interesting example of one of the transitional books which are at present very useful. It occurs to me that while the author proposes to press me into his service, we might advantageously press him into our service.^[50]

In response to Fiske's Destiny of Man (1884), which asserted, "I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work,"^[51] Spencer wrote diplomatically to the author, "You approach more nearly to a positive conclusion than I feel inclined to do."^[52] Although Fiske was instrumental in making Spencer's ideas known in America, he fused those ideas with American transcendentalism and popularized a vision that included evolutionary ethics in a shallow and superficial manner. Like his historical writings, which glorified contemporary culture and projected it as the natural evolution of a cosmic plan, so, too, his picture of morality utilized the past to justify current ethical intuitions by reference to their alleged divine origins.

Fiske, like Drummond and other religious interpreters of Spencer, helped Spencer's evolutionary philosophy reach a wide audience. If we accept the notion that Spencer's goal in life was a scientific basis for proper conduct, then we have to see these popularizers in an ambivalent light. Although their writings might have spread Spencer's fame, they did so by negating his principal aim. Their works, in fact, point to Spencer's failure to provide a satisfactory naturalistic ethic. For by stressing a theistic reading of Spencer and attributing to God the origin of our ethical intuitions, they replaced the scientific basis of correct conduct with divine sanction. This substitution underscored the lack of emotional appeal in evolutionary ethics. To a cerebral type like Spencer, who had a moral vision of what society should be, evolutionary ethics was satisfactory, but for a wider audience, it evidently needed to be reinforced.

[50] David Duncan, ed., Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (New York: D. Appleton, 1908), 1: 309.

[51] John Fiske, The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884): 116.

[52] Clark, Life and Letters of John Fiske, 2: 322.

Whether or not Spencer's popularizers portrayed his ideas accurately, they did introduce him to many readers. Combined with his own extensive writings and their numerous editions, Spencer was a major figure in the history of evolutionary ethics. And the reaction against that position was often aimed at him.

Who were the critics? Those who rejected the rising tide of scientific rationalism viewed Spencer, in spite of his religious defenders, as a dangerous member of a new clerisy. Philosophers, as we shall see in chapters 5 and 6, found much to object to in his method and conclusions. Even among those whom we might expect to be his natural allies, the scientific community, there were grave misgivings. We shall look next at two critics from that community: Thomas Henry Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace. Their criticisms epitomized two major objections to evolutionary ethics among scientists.