href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@48027@[email protected]#Page_248" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">248

Which can be reduced to— (β) Abundance and variety of vital power, 251 That is, to the subjective standard, 253 Summary as to the evolutionist end, 256 (a) Difficulty of reconciling individual and social ends, 256 (b) Hedonistic interpretation of evolution not possible, 257 (c) No independent ethical ideal, 259   CHAPTER IX. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 1. Principles involved in theory of evolution, 263 2. Unsuccessful application of these principles to ethics, 264 (a) The principles being treated empirically, 265 (b) No logical transition having been effected from efficient to final cause, 267 3. Difference between causality and teleology, 269 4. Reference to self-consciousness implied in evolution, 277 (a) Attempt to trace the genesis of self-consciousness, 278 (b) Attempt to trace morality from reflex action, 283 5. The unity of self-consciousness, 284 (a) As making possible the transition from knowledge to morality, 284 (b) As determining the character of the ethical end, 286 (c) As showing that the realisation of the end must be progressive, 291

---

THE ETHICS OF NATURALISM.

CHAPTER I.
ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS.

It is a common remark that a writer's ethical doctrine is throughout conditioned by his attitude to the problems of theoretical philosophy. The main lines of dispute in questions of ethics may be regarded as prolongations of the controversies which arise in metaphysics and psychology. The Realism or Idealism which marks a speculative system reappears in its ethics, whilst differences in the psychological analysis of mental states, or concerning the relation of pleasure to desire, are grounds of distinction between schools of moralists. |(a) Dependence of ethical on theoretical points of view| And not only are the special controversies of ethics decided in different ways, but the scope of the whole science is differently conceived, as the speculative standpoint changes. |(a) teleological,| Thus, not for one school only, but for a whole period in the history of reflection, ethics was regarded as an inquiry into the highest human good. Opposed schools agreed in looking from this point of view, however much they might differ from one another in defining the nature of that highest good. |(b) jural,| At other times, according to the prevailing view, to investigate and systematise the rules of conduct has exhausted the scope of ethics—controversies being carried on as to the nature of those rules, and their source in external authority or in the internal revelation of conscience. |(c) empirical:| Again, ethical inquiry has been apparently identified with the analysis and history of the moral affections and sentiments; while a purely external point of view seems to be sometimes adopted, and ethics held to be an investigation of the historical results of action, and of the forms, customary and institutional, in which those results find permanent expression.

These different ways of looking at the whole subject proceed from points of view whose effects are not confined to ethics, but may be followed out in other lines of investigation. They correspond to ideas which dominate different types of thought and form different philosophical standpoints. The first starts from a teleological conception of human nature, as an organism consciously striving towards its end. The second assimilates ethics to a system of legal enactments, and is connected with the jural conceptions of