athetic regard for the freedoms of
others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to
which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements
co-exist. Mr. Spencer's theory in 1850 was, as his theory still is, that
the mental products of Sympathy which constitute what is called "the
moral sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life; and
that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right human
relations, which become clearer as the form of social life becomes
better. Further, in the earlier work it was inferred, as it is inferred
in the latest, that there is being effected a conciliation of individual
natures with social requirements; so that there will eventually be
achieved the greatest individuation, along with the greatest mutual
dependence,--an equilibrium of such kind that each, in fulfilling the
wants of his own life, will aid in fulfilling the wants of all other
lives. We observe, finally, that, in the first work, there were drawn
essentially the same corollaries respecting the rights of individuals
and their relations to the State that are drawn in the "Principles
of Ethics."

A word may be said in conclusion about the difference between the
relation of Mr. Spencer on the one hand and Darwin on the other to the
thought of the Nineteenth Century. The fact is not to be lost sight of
that the principles of the Evolutionary, or, as Mr. Spencer prefers to
term it, the Synthetic, philosophy were formulated before the
publication of the "Origin of Species." What the ultimately general
acceptance of the theory propounded in Darwin's work did for Mr. Spencer
was precisely this: it greatly strengthened the biological evidence for
the evolutionary hypothesis. That hypothesis was upheld, however, by
evidence drawn not merely from biology, but from many other sources.
Moreover, while the Darwinian theory of natural selection, supplemented
as it was by the adoption of the Lamarkian factors,--the effect of use
and disuse and the assumed transmissibility of acquired
character,--merely attempted to explain the mode in which the changes in
organic life have taken place upon the earth, the evolutionary
hypothesis put forth by Mr. Spencer professed to be applicable to the
whole sphere of the knowable. It is further to be borne in mind that Mr.
Spencer has devoted a large part of his life to tracing in detail the
applications of his fundamental principles to social, politic