With much
material he had himself accumulated in the course of many years, our
author incorporated a much larger amount of material derived from the
compilations just mentioned when writing the "Principles of Sociology."

VI.

It is the two volumes entitled the "Principles of Ethics" to which we
shall lastly invite attention. The six parts of which this work is
composed were published in an irregular manner. Part I., presenting the
data of ethics, was issued in 1879; Part IV., a treatise on "Justice,"
in 1891; Parts II. and III., which set forth respectively the inductions
of ethics and the ethics of individual life, and which, along with Part
I., form the first volume, were issued in 1892; Parts V. and VI., which
treat respectively of negative beneficence and positive beneficence,
were issued in 1893, and, along with Part IV., constitute the second
volume. With regard to the "Principles of Ethics," considered as a
whole, it should be noted that the author was prompted to prepare the
work, notwithstanding the ill health by which he was incessantly
interrupted, by the conviction that the establishment of rules of
conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral
injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred
origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Those who
reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency
conferred by it may safely be thrown aside. On the other hand, those
who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance
it yields, no guidance can exist, divine commandments being, in their
opinion, the only possible guides. Dissenting from both of these
beliefs, Mr. Spencer has had for his primary purpose in the two volumes
under review to show that, apart from any supposed supernatural basis,
the principles of ethics have a natural basis. In these two volumes this
natural basis is set forth, and its corollaries are elaborated. If the
conclusions to which the general law of evolution introduces us are not
in all cases as definite as might be wished, yet our author submits that
they are more definite than those to which we are introduced by the
current creed. Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected.
Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living
under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently
forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of specific statements