When it is said, therefore--either as a political or an ethical theory--that the happiness of society is the end for conduct, the end prescribed is altruistic rather than social. Its object is not an organism, but an aggregate of individuals. A certain organisation of society may lead to an increase in this aggregate happiness, and so be necessary for the attainment of the end; but if the end is happiness, the social organism and its wellbeing are no longer the thing cared for, but the greatest aggregate of pleasures on the part of its members. [Sidenote: Theory of obligation simplified, if universalistic end arrived at.] So long, therefore, as the end is pleasure, it must have reference to individuals. The utilitarian may try to persuade the agent to seek the pleasures of others as if they were his own--requiring him thus to seek his end out of himself, and the circle of his own pleasures. And, while we continue to hold pleasure to be the end, the evolution-theory can go no further than this. It seemed to have made out an organic unity between different individuals, through which it might be possible to effect a reconciliation between the rival ethical principles of egoism and altruism. But the feeling of pleasure is just the point where individualism is strongest, and in regard to which mankind, instead of being an organism in which each part but subserves the purposes of the whole, must rather be regarded as a collection of competing and co-operating units. It is true that the social factor in the individual life is brought into scientific cognisance by the theory of evolution. It shows the way in which his interests and feelings depend upon others. And if, through the influence of a political standpoint, or of some intuition of reason, a universalistic ethics has been already arrived at, it can bring forward the organic union of individual and society as a means of enforcing the social end upon the individual agent. In this way the theory of evolution makes a contribution to ethics at a critical point where the individualist theory failed. For ethics must not rest content with pointing out an end for conduct or standard of morality, without giving a reason to the individual why he should make this end his own--that is, developing a doctrine of obligation. In many current theories, notably in the common forms of utilitarianism, the two things are not necessarily connected, since the standard is fixed from the point of view of the whole, and obligation has reference to the individual. The development of morality may appear to show how the two standpoints can be connected. If it could be made out that the happiness of the community and of the individual are identical, a standard of morality which made the aggregate happiness the end might be regarded as carrying its own obligation within itself: politics and ethics would (on the hedonistic theory) be harmonised. And, in so far as evolution has brought the individual and society