Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/54

MOEAL OBLIGATION. 43 The other development does present the required rationale, namely, in physical evolution. It is this which determines the true ethical end human development towards the com- plete realisation of function and adaptation to environment. At present it constitutes, says Mr. Spencer, a Relative Ethics, but in the distance we see it will bring out an Absolute Ethics, in which, " instead of each maintaining his own claims, others will maintain his claims for him ". This is just what Utilitarianism has always sought, as it had to seek ; but it has obviously been gained only by reading 'existence' for 'obligation,' 'is' for 'ought'. Morality is taken from the individual and habited in an external deter- miner, or, to say the same thing, it is left with an individual who, in everything he does, exhibits the resulting product of a determination, to which in ultimate analysis he is found to be the passive subject, if anything more than the resultant himself. The ethical end is thus not for, but of, man. Not only is morality proper taken from the individual ; what ghost of it remains is equally claimed in kind by the meanest object of his environment. Just as Clifford found it necessary so to extend the psychology of this evolution as to find the elements of consciousness in material operations, for the sake of the same consistency this physical ethics has to be similarly extended. Thus, while Spencer would apply moral distinctions only to the actions of sentient beings, his natural successors see no reason whatever for the limitation. " Is a watch that won't go the less a bad watch," says a writer in MIND, " because it neither made itself nor wound itself up ? . . . . Is a man the less a bad man because he only follows his bad will and did not originate it ? " The only other end we shall examine under the postulate of Obligation is Perfection. Now subjective perfection, the mere attainment of efficiency, is not the ethical end for the simple reason that it may not include the rights of the object. Accordingly all the famous systems of Perfection have had an objective as well as a subjective reference. This is prominent in the formulas to realise, according to Aristotle, the perfect exercise of a perfect life ; according to Kant, an absolutely good-will ; and according to Hegel, universal self-consciousness. Each of these regards the perfection of the individual as only a constituent in the actual end which is at once internal and external, subjective and objective. Society and the individual reach perfection, not by the former acting for itself the doctrine proper to Physical Evolution, nor by the latter acting for himself the doctrine of Sophism or Egoism ; neither according to such