So much for Mr Spencer. It is, of course, quite possible that his treatment of Ethics contains many interesting and instructive remarks. It would seem, indeed, that Mr Spencer’s main view, that of which he is most clearly and most often conscious, is that pleasure is the sole good, and that to consider the direction of evolution is by far the best _criterion_ of the way in which we shall get most of it: and this theory, _if_ he could establish that amount of pleasure is always in direct proportion to amount of evolution _and also_ that it was plain what conduct was more evolved, _would_ be a very valuable contribution to the science of Sociology; it would even, if pleasure were the sole good, be a valuable contribution to Ethics. But the above discussion should have made it plain that, if what we want from an ethical philosopher is a scientific and systematic Ethics, not merely an Ethics professedly ‘based on science’; if what we want is a clear discussion of the fundamental principles of Ethics, and a statement of the ultimate reasons why one way of acting should be considered better than another--then Mr Spencer’s ‘Data of Ethics’ is immeasurably far from satisfying these demands. =34.= It remains only to state clearly what is definitely fallacious in prevalent views as to the relation of Evolution to Ethics--in those views with regard to which it seems so uncertain how far Mr Spencer intends to encourage them. I proposed to confine the term ‘Evolutionistic Ethics’ to the view that we need only to consider the tendency of ‘evolution’ in order to discover the direction in which we _ought_ to go. This view must be carefully distinguished from certain others, which may be commonly confused with it. (1) It might, for instance, be held that the direction in which living things have hitherto developed is, as a matter of fact, the direction of progress. It might be held that the ‘more evolved’ is, as a matter of fact, also better. And in such a view no fallacy is involved. But, if it is to give us any guidance as to how we ought to act in the future, it does involve a long and painful investigation of the exact points in which the superiority of the more evolved consists. We cannot assume that, because evolution is progress _on the whole_, therefore every point in which the more evolved differs from the less is a point in which it is better than the less. A simple consideration of the course of evolution will therefore, on this view, by no means suffice to inform us of the course we ought to pursue. We shall have to employ all the resources of a strictly ethical discussion in order to arrive at a correct valuation of the different results of evolution--to distinguish the more valuable from the less valuable, and both from those which are no better than their causes, or perhaps even worse. In fact it is difficult to see how, on this view--if all that be meant is that evolution has _on the whole_ been a progress--the theory of evolution