Society cannot exist without sacrifice. The ethics which start from individuals try to distribute this in such a way that through the devotion of individuals as many as possible are voluntary sacrifices, and that the individuals who are most severely hit are relieved of their burden as far as possible by others. This is the doctrine of self-sacrifice. The sociological ethics which no longer reach back at individual ethics can only lay it down that the progress of society advances according to inexorable laws at the price of the freedom and prosperity of individuals and groups of individuals. This is the doctrine of being sacrificed by others. If followed out consistently, biological and sociological utilitarianism arrives finally, even if with hesitation, at the conviction that in reality it no longer has for its object the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. To this object, which was thus formulated by Bentham, it must now assign, as being sentimental, a place behind one which corresponds more exactly to reality. What is to be realized in the ever more complete development of the mutual relations between the individual and society is not, if one dares to admit it, an increase in the welfare either of the individual or of society but . . . the enhancing and perfecting of life as such. However much it may struggle against it, utilitarianism, as soon as it has become biological and sociological, undergoes a change in its ethical character, and enters the service of supra-ethical aims. Spencer still fights to keep it in the path of natural ethical feeling. Developed utilitarianism, directed to the enhancing and perfecting of life, can no longer regard the claims of humanity as absolutely binding, but must make up its mind in certain cases to go outside them. Biology has become its master. Sociological ethics and socialism. Mechanical belief in progress If it be granted that progress in the welfare of society depends on the application of the conclusions of biology [pg 161] and scientific sociology, it is not as a matter of course necessary to leave to the good pleasure of the individual the corresponding conduct which is to be ethical. It can be imposed upon him, if by economic measures and measures of organization the relation between the individual and society is determined in such a way that it automatically functions in the most effective way. Thus by the side of social ethics socialism makes its appearance. Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825),_(_57_)_ Charles Fourier (1772-1837)_(_58_)_ and P. J. Proudhon (1809-1865)_(_59_)_ in France, Robert Owen, the mill-owner (1771-1858),_(_60_)_ in England, and Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64),_(_61_)_ and others in Germany, prelude its appearance. Karl Marx (1818-1883)_(_62_)_ and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) put forward in _Das Kapital_ its consistent programme, demanding the abolition of private property and the State-regulation both of labour and of the reward of labour.