How, then, are we to conceive the nature or conduct of the "straight man"? To begin with, it is made clear that his dealings are only with straight men; for there are no "crooked men" in the ideal community. "The coexistence of a perfect man and an imperfect society is impossible; and could the two coexist the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical standard sought."[208] "The ultimate man is one in whom this process [of adaptation to the social state] has gone so far as to produce a correspondence between all the promptings of his nature and all the requirements of his life as carried on in society. If so, it is a necessary implication that there exists an ideal code of conduct formulating the behaviour of the completely-adapted man in the completely-evolved society." This is the code of Absolute Ethics, whose injunctions alone are "absolutely right," and which, "as a system of ideal conduct, is to serve as a standard for our guidance in solving, as well as we can, the problems of real conduct."[209] At the outset, we were required to "interpret the more developed by the less developed;" [210] the conclusion sets forth that the less developed is to be guided by the more developed, the real by the ideal. Now, ethics "includes all conduct which furthers or hinders, in either direct or indirect ways, the welfare of self or others."[211] Thus Absolute Ethics, like Relative Ethics, has two divisions, personal and social. As to the latter, Mr Spencer formulates certain principles of justice, negative beneficence, and positive beneficence,[212] which describe the harmonious co-operation of ideal men in the ideal state. These principles may perhaps be capable of a modified application to the present state of society, in which there is a conflict of interests: although Mr Spencer's representation of them--which is still, however, incomplete--suggests the belief that they are not so much guides which the ideal gives to the real, as suggestions for the construction of a Utopia gathered from the requirements of present social life. But, supposing the "harmonious co-operation" of individuals to be thus provided for, what is the personal end? and what, it might be added, is the social end, if society has any further function than regulating the relation of its units to one another? Absolute ethics does not seem to be able to give much guidance here. "A code of perfect personal conduct," we are told, "can never be made definite."[213] There are various types of activities, all of which may belong to lives "complete after their kinds." But yet "perfection of individual life" does imply "certain modes of action which are approximately alike in all cases, and which, therefore, become part of the subject-matter of ethics." We cannot lay down "precise rules for private conduct," but only "general requirements." And these are: to maintain the balance between waste and nutrition, to observe a relation between