The strength of utilitarianism lies in its simplicity. Bentham and Adam Smith still show this quality. They have society in their minds as the sum of a number of individuals, not as an organized body. Their efforts are directed to inducing human beings to do as much good as they can to each other. With John Stuart Mill this simplicity disappears. To him, and then in still stronger measure to Spencer and others, it occurs that the ethic of the conduct of an individual to his fellows cannot be carried through as a matter of reasoning. Hence, they conclude, “scientific ethics” has to do only with the relations between individuals and organized society as such. Bentham’s simple utilitarianism puts before the individual an estimate of the manifold ways in which society needs his devotion if it is to see all its members prosperous, and appeals to his enthusiasm. The utilitarianism which has become biological and sociological tries to reckon up for the individual the correct balance between egoism and devotion. It pretends to be social-science transformed to sentiment. Adam Smith keeps ethics and sociology still apart in such a way that he is not a sociologist when he speaks as a moralist, and not a moralist when he puts forward sociological theories. Now, however, the two points of view are worked in together, and indeed in such a way that ethics are merged in sociology. The ethic of the simple utilitarianism is concerned with actions produced by enthusiasm, the biologico-sociological ethic with the conscientious employment of the complicated [pg 157] machinery of organized society. In the former an occasional piece of ineffective action means at worst a waste of power, in the latter a disturbance of the organism. Hence thorough-going utilitarianism comes to a depreciatory estimate of the ethic of the individual which springs from ethical convictions in the individual and does not think biologically and sociologically. That in the sphere of individual ethics there are no more discoveries to make, passes with the later utilitarians for admitted. They regard them as an uninteresting hinterland, to advance into which is not worth while. They therefore confine themselves to the fertile coast land of social ethics. They see, no doubt, that the streams which water this lower ground come from the hinterland of individual ethics. But instead of following them up to their sources their only care is to make the lower ground safe from occasional inundations which may be caused by them. They therefore lead the streams into such deep-lying channels that the land gets parched. Scientific ethics undertakes the impossible, viz. to regulate devotion from outside. It tries to drive water-mills without any head of water, and to shoot with a bow which is but half-bent.