GENERAL PREFACE. THE divisions of which this work consists have been published in an irregular manner. Part I was issued in 1879; Part IV in 1891; Parts II and III, forming along with Part I, the first volume, were issued in 1892; and Parts V and VI, concluding the second volume, 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 intended to account for 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 a desideratum. Now that the work is complete, it becomes possible to prefix some general remarks, which could not rightly be prefixed to any one of the instalments. The ethical doctrine set forth is fundamentally a corrected and elaborated version of the doctrine set forth in Social Statics, issued at the end of 1850. The correspondence between the two is shown, in the first place, by the coincidence of their constructive divisions. In Social Statics the subjectmatter of Morality is divided into parts which treat respectively of Private Conduct, Justice, Negative Beneficence, and Positive Beneficence; and these severally answer to Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI, constituting the constructive portion of this work: to which 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 Statics one division only of the ethical system 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, Man, in common with lower creatures, is held to be capable of indefinite change by adaptation to conditions. In both he is regarded as undergoing transformation from a nature appropriate to his aboriginal wild life, to a nature appropriate to a settled civilized life; and in both this transformation is described as a moulding into a form fitted for harmonious co-operation. 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 work, 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 co-operation implies that limitation of individual freedom which results from sympathetic regard for the freedoms of others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity 'to which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements consist. Morality, truly so called, was described in the original work as formulating the law of the "straight man"; and this conception corresponds with the conception of Absolute Ethics, set forth in this work. The theory then was, as the theory still is, that those mental products of Sympathy constituting what is called "the Moral Sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life; and that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right 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 requirements; so that there will eventually be achieved_the__greatest individuation along with the greatest mutual dependence-an equilibrium of such kind that each, in fulfilling the wants of his own life, will spontaneously aid in fulfilling the wants of all other lives. Finally, in the first work 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 which fell dead in 1850, have now become generally diffused; and, more especially since the publication of the Data of Ethics in 1879, have met with so wide an acceptance that the majority of recent works on Ethics take cognizance of them, and, in many cases, tacitly assume them, or some of them. Sundry of these works convey either the impression that the evolutionary view of Ethics has long been familiar, or else that it dates from 1859, when the doctrine of "Natural Selection" was promulgated. In this connexion I may name Mr. S. Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, and still more the Review of the Systems of Ethics founded on Evolution, by Mr. C. M. Williams. 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 system of Evolutionary Ethics." Though in the exposition of my own views, which immediately 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 Mr. Darwin. And this, indeed, is the established general belief; as is sufficiently shown by |