CHAPTER II.

NATURALISTIC ETHICS.

=24.= This and the two following chapters will consider certain proposed answers to the second of ethical questions: What is _good in itself_? These proposed answers are characterised by the facts (1) that they declare some _one_ kind of thing to be alone good in itself; and (2) that they do so, because they suppose this _one_ thing to define the meaning of ‘good.’ 37

=25.= Such theories may be divided into two groups (1) Metaphysical, (2) Naturalistic: and the second group may be subdivided into two others, (_a_) theories which declare some natural object, other than pleasure, to be sole good, (_b_) Hedonism. The present chapter will deal with (_a_). 38

=26.= Definition of what is meant by ‘Naturalism.’ 39

=27.= The common argument that things are good, because they are ‘natural,’ may involve either (1) the false proposition that the ‘normal,’ as such, is good; 41

=28.= or (2) the false proposition that the ‘necessary,’ as such, is good. 44

=29.= But a _systematised_ appeal to Nature is now most prevalent in connection with the term ‘Evolution.’ An examination of Mr Herbert Spencer’s Ethics will illustrate this form of Naturalism. 45

=30.= Darwin’s scientific theory of ‘natural selection,’ which has mainly caused the modern vogue of the term ‘Evolution,’ must be carefully distinguished from certain ideas which are commonly associated with the latter term. 47

=31.= Mr Spencer’s connection of Evolution with Ethics seems to shew the influence of the naturalistic fallacy; 48

=32.= but Mr Spencer is vague as to the ethical relations of ‘pleasure’ and ‘evolution,’ and his Naturalism may be mainly Naturalistic Hedonism. 49

=33.= A discussion of the third chapter of the _Data of Ethics_ serves to illustrate these two points and to shew that Mr Spencer is in utter confusion with regard to the fundamental principles of Ethics. 51

=34.= Three possible views as to the relation of Evolution to Ethics are distinguished from the naturalistic view to which it is proposed to confine the name ‘Evolutionistic Ethics.’ On any of these three views the relation would be unimportant, and the ‘Evolutionistic’ view, which makes it important, involves a double fallacy. 54

=35.= Summary of chapter. 58