Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 5758. "Morality properly so-called--the science of right conduct--has for its object to determine _how_ and _why_ certain rules of conduct are detrimental, and certain other rules beneficial. Those good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of moral science to _deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence_, what kinds of action _necessarily_ tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.... The objection which I have to the current utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of utility--does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of moral science.... It is supposed that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results; and that there is no possibility of knowing by deduction from fundamental principles what conduct _must_ be detrimental and what conduct _must_ be beneficial." _Cf._ also ch. IX, and Stephen, Science of Ethics, ch. IX. It is contended, then, that by the use of the evolutionary theory, we may substitute certain conditions, which in the very nature of things tend to produce happiness, for a calculation, based upon observation of more or less varying cases in the past, of the probable results of the specific action. Thus we get a fixed objective standard and do away with all the objections based upon the uncertainty, vagueness and liability to exceptions, of the ordinary utilitarian morality. Spencer, Op. cit., p. 162: "When alleging that empirical utilitarianism is but introductory to rational utilitarianism I pointed out that the last does not take welfare for its _immediate_ object of pursuit, but takes for its immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain principles which, in the nature of things, causally determine welfare."