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SUBJECTIVIST THEORY OF ETHICS 367
and willingness society would become impossible and the
general happiness would be diminished.
III. THEORIES OF ETHICS BASED UPON
NON-ETHICAL THEORIES AND PAR-
TICULARLY UPON THE THEORY OF
EVOLUTION
General Principles of Spencer's Ethics. In the nineteenth
century a number ofethical thcorieswcrc propounded
which owed their characteristic features to the popularisation
of the doctrine of evolution. The general conclusion
of these theories of ethics is briefly as follows. Evolution
is a universal process of which human beings are particular
expressions. Therefore the laws which govern the process
of evolution are also the laws of human nature. These laws
are broadly summed up in the doctrine of the struggle for
survival. Therefore, whatever assists organisms, including
human beings, to survive will be good; .it will also be
pleasant.
Herbert Spencer's (1820-1903) so-called evolutionary
ethics, the principles of which are set out in works entitled
Principles of Ethics > Social Statics, and Inductions of Ethics
may be regarded as constituting a typical statement of
this point of view.
Spencer's approach to ethics is logical and scientific.
His avowed purpose in writing is to give to the rules of
moral conduct die status of deductions from self-evident
premises; to give them, that is to say, the necessary character
which belongs to propositions in logic. Good for Spencer
has no distinctive, objective meaning. Good means, always
and only, good of its kind; and a thing is good ofits land,
when it adequately performs its appointed function.
Good, therefore, is instrumental; it is a means to an end,
namely, the right performance of function. The word
has, however, for. Spencer, a further meaning for, we may
ask, " What is the end which the adequate performance of