Herbert Spencer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The good is not read off evolution as a clerk reads figures from a ledger; it is deduced from what evolution has been doing and must continue to do under the conditions it imposes. The two are different operations, and the question turns on keeping them apart. Begin with what the process shows. A predominant egoism, in which each creature reaped the benefits of its own superiority, was the condition of maintaining life from the beginning, and so of maintaining each species and of evolving higher ones.
Yet from the beginning altruism was co-essential, since the egoism of generation after generation was made possible only by the altruism which sacrifices a portion of the life of each generation for the next.1 Neither principle is an intruder upon the other; they were born together. That is a datum, observed in the order of life, and it stands as firmly as any in biology.
Now the present state of things. So long as men are imperfectly adapted to the social state, there must be everywhere a large percentage of sacrifice, of others to self or of self to others, and wherever there is sacrifice there is submission to pain and a failure of complete life, which is complete happiness.2 I do not conceal this; the conflict between egoism and altruism, which constitutes the crux of all ethical speculation, is real in the stage we have reached.
But I hold it to be transitional, in process of gradual disappearance.2 Is the disappearance a prophecy or an inference? I say inference, though one that rests on a condition. With the approximately complete adaptation of man to the social state, with a society complete in its adjustments, and with the diminished pressure of population that the highest type of life brings, there will come a state in which egoism and altruism are so conciliated that the one merges in the other.3
The ground for this is not hope. Those who accept evolution cannot consistently deny that if lower creatures exist in which altruistic activities have become one with egoistic activities, a parallel identification will occur in human beings under parallel conditions.3 The social insects are the instance to the point, creatures whose lives are absorbed in subserving the lives of others.
The conclusion follows from the laws of life: unceasing social discipline will so mould human nature that sympathetic pleasures will be pursued spontaneously to the fullest extent advantageous to each and to all.4 The process is already visible. Compare the blood-feuds that ran from generation to generation with the present, when such aggressions as remain are fewer and less violent.
Compare the age in which slavery excited no repugnance even in moralists with ours, which names it the sum of all villainies. Compare the savage who tortures his captive, or the hero who drags his dead foe behind a chariot, with nations that now send doctors and nurses to the wounded of the enemy. Negative altruism, the refraining from injury, has increased, and with it the positive regard for others' welfare.5
Only those who hold human nature to be unalterably and desperately wicked can refuse to see it.5 Two cautions, lest I be misread. First, the course of evolution does not itself certify the good in every phase. I have said that the fittest, over a wide range of cases, are not the best, and that the brute struggle between societies, once a cause of progress, has become a cause of retrogression, demoralizing the conqueror while slaughtering the conquered.4
The ethical standard is the conduct that yields the fullest life, which evolution tends toward only under peaceful, industrial conditions. Second, the conciliation does not stop at justice. A society of scrupulous contract-keepers is not the limit of evolution; the limit is reached only when, beyond the avoidance of injuries, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others, for every man would lose many goods did none give him unpaid assistance.6
The conciliation is therefore a science in its derivation and conditional in its fulfilment. It is as sure as the adaptation of organisms to their conditions, and no surer than the maintenance of those conditions. Let war return and the whole process reverses.
Conduct is good or bad according as its aggregate results, to self or others or both, are pleasurable or painful; and the conduct evolution produces is the conduct that furthers the most life, in length and in breadth, for oneself, one's offspring and one's fellows.7 Moral intuitions are real, but they are the inherited and organised experience of utility in the race, not fixed implants.
As men are adapted to the social state, egoism and altruism will be conciliated and the pleasure of serving others will become spontaneous. Absolute ethics, the code of the completely adapted man in the completely evolved society, is the standard by which our relative ethics is measured.891011
a predominant egoism, through which each achieved the benefits of its own superiority, was the condition not only to the maintenance of life from the beginning, but a condition to the maintenance of each species, and therefore to the evolution of higher species." / "from the beginning altruism has been co-essentialThe Principles of Ethics Vol 1
there must be everywhere a certain large percentage of sacrifice... Here there remains to be shown the invalidity of this conclusion... this conflict between egoism and altruism, which now constitutes the crux in all ethical speculation, is transitional, and is in process of gradual disappearance.The Principles of Ethics Vol 1
Eventually, then, along with the approximately-complete adaptation of man to the social state... there will come also a state in which egoism and altruism are so conciliated that the one merges in the other.The Principles of Ethics Vol 1
from the laws of life it must be concluded that unceasing social discipline will so mould human nature, that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and to all." / "the survival of the fittest is not always the survival of the bestVarious Fragments, enlarged ed
along with the progress of civilization, there has been growing up not only that kind of altruism which is shown in decreasing aggressiveness on fellow-men, but also that kind of altruism which is shown in actual regard for their welfare.The Principles of Ethics Vol 1
The limit of evolution of conduct is consequently not reached, until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others.The Principles of Ethics Vol 2
Contrariwise, badness brings to mind, as its leading correlative, the conduct of one who, in carrying on his own life, damages the lives of others by injuring their bodies, destroying their possessions, defrauding them, calumniating them.The Principles of Ethics Vol 1
And if we ask whether the dynamics of the Solar System could have been established in any other way, we see that here, too, simple truths holding under ideal conditions, have to be ascertained before real truths existing under complex conditions can be ascertained. The alleged necessary precedence of Absolute Ethics over Relative Ethics is thus, I think, further elucidated.The Principles of Ethics Vol 1
Hence it is manifest that we must consider the ideal man as existing in the ideal social state. On the evolution-hypothesis, the two presuppose one another; and only when they co-exist, can there exist that ideal conduct which Absolute Ethics has to formulate, and which Relative Ethics has to take as the standard by which to estimate divergencies from right, or degrees of wrong. CHAPTEK XYI. THE SCOPE OF ETHICS.The Principles of Ethics Vol 1
For the right restraints are in all cases such as have in view the eventual welfare of the individual blamed or praised — his eventual improvement. But improvement of the individual consists in the better fitting of him for social co-operation; and this, being conducive to social prosperity, is conducive to maintenance of the race. 427.The Principles of Ethics Vol 2
Be it a policy advocated, a law passed, an agency set up, a discipline used, an injunction urged, if its sole warrant is that of furthering the happiness of men as they are, then, if men are becoming other than they are, furtherance of their happiness in future cannot be inferred; and there may result hindrance to their happiness. Mark, now, another implication.The Principles of Ethics Vol 2
The ethics he regarded as the purpose of the whole Synthetic Philosophy and the part most attacked: by Sidgwick and Green for its hedonism, by Moore as the type of the naturalistic fallacy, by Huxley for reading the cosmic process as a moral one.