General Preface

GENERAL PREFACE. THE divisions of· which this work consists have been pub lished in· an irregular manner. Part I was issued in 1879 ; Part IV in 1891; Parts II and III, forIning along with Part I, the first volume, ,vere issued in 1892; and Parts V and VI, concluding the second volun1e, have now, along with Part IV, been just issued. The reasons for this seemingly eccentric order of publication, primarily caused by ill-health, will be found stated in the respective prefaces; which, by those who care to understand why the succession named has been followed, should be read in the order: Preface to Part I; then that to Part IV/; Preface to Vol. I; and then that to Vol. II. . The· preservation of these respective prefaces, while in tended to account £01' the anomalous course pursued, serves also to explain some repetitions which, I fancy, have been made requisite by the separate publication of the parts: the independence of each having been ade8ideratum.

N ow that the work -is cOIllplete, it becomes possible to prefix some l general remarks, which cOllldnot rightly be prefixed to anyone of the instalments. The ethical doctrine set forth is fundamentally a cor re~ted and elaborated version of the doctrine set forth in Social Static8, issued at the end of 18'50. The correspond ence between the two is sho,vn, in the first place, by the coincidence of their constructive divisions. In Social Static8 the subject-matter of Morality is divided into parts which treat respecti ~el'y of Pri vate. Oonduct, .J ustice, Negative (v) vi GENERAL PREFACE. Beneficence, and Poeiti ve Beneficence; and these severally answer to Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI, con stituting the constructive portion of this work: to \,dlich there are, however, here prefixed Part I, The Data, and Part II, The Inductions; in conformity with the course I have pursued throughout The Synthetic Philosophy. In Social Static8 one division only of the ethical systern marked out was developed - Justice; and I did not, when it was written, suppose that I should ever develop the others.

Besides coinciding in - their divisions, the two works agree in their cardinal ideas. As in the one so in the other, }Ian, in cornmon with lower creatures, is held to be capable of indefinite change by adaptation to conditions. In both he is regarded as undergoing transforrnation from a nature appropriate to his aboriginal wild life, to a nature appropriate to a settled civilized life; and in both this transforrnation is described as a moulding into a fornl fitted for harmonious cooperation. In both, too, this moulding is said to. be effected by the repression of certain primitive traits no longer needed, and the development of needful traits. As in the first \vork, so in this last, the great factor in the progressive modification is shown to be Sympathy. It was contended then, as it is contended now, that harmonious social cooperation implies that limitation of individual freedom wliich results froIn sympathetic regard for the freedoms of others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to \\Thich equit able individual conduct and equitable social arrangements consist. Morality, truly so called, was described in the original work as formulating the law of the "straight Inan "; and this conception corresponds \vith the concep tion of Absolute Ethics, set forth in this work. The theory then was, as tbe theory still is, that those mental products of Synlpathy constituting what is called" the Moral Sense,"

arise as fast as lTIen are disciplined into social life; and that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right GENERAL PREFACE. vii human relations, which become clearer as the form of social life becomes better. Further, it was inferred at that time as at this, that there is being effected a conciliation of individual natures with social reqllirelnents; so that there 'will eventually be achieved the greatest indi vidna tion along with the greatest Inutual dependence - an equilibriuin of such kind that each, in fulfilling the wants of his own life, ""\Till spontaneously aid in fulfilling the wants of all other Iives. Finally, in the first 'York there were drawn essentially the same corollaries respecting the rights of individuals and their relations to the State, that are drawn in this last work. Of course it yields me no small satisfaction to find that these ideas ,vhich fell dead in 1850, have now become generally diffused; and, more especially since the publica tion of the .Data qf Ethic8 in 1879, have met with so wide an acceptance that the majority of recent ,yorks on Ethics take cognizance of theIn, and, in !llany cases, tacitly assume them, or S0111e of them. Sundry of these works con vey either the hnpression that the evolutionary vie,Y of Ethics has long been familiar, or else that it dates from 1859, when the doctrine of " Natural Selection" was pro mulgated. In this connexion I lnay name Mr. S. Alexan der's Koral Order and Progress, and still more the Review oftn,e Systems ofEth,icsfounded on Evolution, by Mr. '0. M.

Williarns. Alike in the introductory remarks of this last volume, and ·in the paragraph closing the account given of the views of Darwin, Wallace, and Haeckel, it is alleged that these "great original authorities paved the way for a s,ysteln of Evolutionary Ethics." Though in the exposition of my own views, which ilnmediately succeeds, there is a recognition of the fact that they date back to 1851, yet the collocation, as well as the express statements, practically cancel this inconsistent admission; and leave the impression that they are sequences of those of lVir. Darwin. And this, indeed, is the established general beviii GENERAL PREFACE. lief; as is sufficiently shown by the phrase "Darwinislll in Ethics," frequently to be Inet with, and .."rhich I no""v have before me in a review of Mr. vVillialns' book. Rectification of this misbelief is of course hopeless. The world resents any attempt to show that it ,has fallen into an error; so that I should perhaps best .consult my personal in terests by saying nothing. But it seems to me proper to point out, as a matter of historical truth, that in this case, as in other cases, the genesis of ideas does not al\vays follow the order of logical sequence; and that the doctrine of organic evolution in its application to human character and intelli gence, and, by inlplication, to society, is of earlier date than The Origin of Species.

Without entering at length upon the prolegomena of Ethics, it Inay be ""veIl here to state briefly one of them. The tacit assumption Inade in this work, as more or less con sistently in all mode:t:,n works on Ethics, is that the conduct dealt with is the conduct of and between like-natured indi viduals-individuals whose likenesses of nature are so great in comparison with their differences as to constitute them of the same kind. The possibility of another assulnption, and consequently' of another Ethics, may be best shown by an analogy. The several kinds of social. insects, though they do not form societies proper (since a nest of theIn is one large family descended from the same parents) yet show us that there Inay exist a body of co-operators aluong which a marked in equality is an essential trait; and they illustrate the possi bility of a social organization such that the normal conduct of class to class is guided by rules appropriate to each class, and not common to all classes. They suggest that dissimilar members of a community may work together harmoniously on principles adapted to inequalities of nature. And they draw attention to the fact that there have been, and are, hUluan societies constituted in a 'way which is analogous, to GENERAL PREFACE: ix the extent that its classes of units, clearly marked off froln one another, and devoted to different kinds of activities, either have, or tend to acquire, contrasted characters proper to their relative positions, and reciprocal codes of conduct which are thought. obligatory. Societies fornled of dOlni· nant and enslaved races obviously answer to this description.

In the United States in &lavery days, it was common for slaves to jeer at free negroes as having no white man to take care 'of them. To such an extent may the sentiments be come moulded to relations of inequality that, as in South .Africa, the servants of a mild nlaster will speak contemptu ously of him because he does not thrash them. With ex treme cases such as these to give the clue, we may perceive that "whereverthere are ruling classes and servile classes, as throughout Europe' in early days, there COlnes to be' an ad justment of natures such that command on the one side and obedience on the other are the natural concomitants of the social type. By continuous breeding of each class within it self, there tends to arise a differentiation into two varieties, such that the one becomes organically ~dapted to suprelnacy and the other to subordination. And it needs but to recall the ancient feudal loyalty, running down through all grades, or the fealty shown by an ancient Highlander to his chief, to see that there grow up ethical conceptions adjusted to the conditions.

But systems of ethics appropriate to social systems charac terized by ~hese organized inequalities of 8tatu8 cannot be the hig4est systems of /ethics. Manifestly they presuppose imperfect natures-natures which are not self-sufficing. On the one side there is the need for control from without for the proper regulation of conduct; and on the other side there is the need for exercise of control, which, in an opposite way, irnplies lack of self-sufficingness. Further, external regulation is less economical of energy than internal regulation. When classes -of inferiors are governed by classes of superiors, there is a waste of action which does not x GENERAL PREFACE. occur when all are self-governed. But chiefly the imperfec tion of ethical systerns appropriate to societies characterized by organized inequality, is that synlpathy, and all those emo tions into which sympathy enters, and all that happiness of which sympathy is the root, relnain incomplete. Alien na tures cannot synlpathize in full measure-can synlpathize only in respect of those feelings which they have in com mon. Hence the unlikenesses presupposed between perma nently ruling classes and pernlanently subject classes, nega ti ve that highest happiness which a rational ethics takes for its end.

Throughout this work, therefore, the tacit assumption will be that the beings spoken of have that substantial unity of nature which characterizes the same variety of Man; and the work will not, save incidentally Or by contrast, take ac count of mixed societies, such as that which we have estab lished in India, and still less of slave-societies. June, 1893. H. S.