The data of ethics / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The data of ethics / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    duct of the higlier animals as compared with that of man^ and the conduct of the lower animals as compared with that of the higher, mainly differ in this, that the adjustments of acts to ends are relatively simple and relatively incom- plete. And as in other cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part of conduct which Ethics deals with, we must study human conduct as a whole; so, fully to 'understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of that larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings in general. N'or is even this whole conceived with the needful fulness, so long as we think only of the conduct at present dis- played around us. We have to include in our conception the less-developed conduct out of which this has arisen in course of time. We have to regard the conduct now shown us by creatures of all orders, as an outcome of the conduct which has brought life of every kind to its present height. And this is tantamount to saying that our preparatory step must be to study the evolution of conduct.