In the adjustment of internal to external relations, he makes pleasure and pain both factors and ends. "As fast as an accompanying sentiency arises it cannot be one that is disagreeable, prompting resistance, but must be one that is agreeable, prompting persistence. The pleasurable sensation itself must be the stimulus to the contraction by which the pleasurable sensation is maintained and increased; or must be so bound up with the stimulus that the two increase together. Sentient existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts." It is only, however, in the last stages of evolution that pure pleasure, which is the ideal as formulated in his 'absolute ethics,' can be attained. When the perfected state of society is reached, then, he says, "The pleasures and pains which the moral sentiments originate will, like bodily pleasure and pain, become incentives and deterrents so adjusted that moral conduct will be the natural conduct."[1]
The criticism on the 'psychological view' may be brought out in a consideration of the ideal. Spencer takes the hedonistic standpoint, that the final aim of all activity, individual and social, is pleasure. He departs from pure hedonism, however, in modifying this to read, that the purpose of all action is "pleasure at some time and to somebody," and is "the maximum of pleasure." This very word 'maximum' introduces into his ideal something besides its pure qualitative connotation of pleasure. 'Greatest' is a quantitative term; it means measure. Pleasure "at some time" indicates that the ideal has reference to the distinction of present and future time, and, as Spencer elsewhere says, one occasion must be subordinated to another, thus involving sacrifice or control. Again, pleasure "for somebody" is a recognition of social differences, and implies that we should under some circumstances consider persons. Thus, when Spencer says that we ought to seek the maximum of pleasure, not forgetting in our calculations future times and other persons, he is greatly modifying the ideal with which he started. Pleasure as an end contradicts Spencer's own criterion of the end as length and breadth of life. Pleasure is the very opposite of what we call
- ↑ Principles of Ethics, Pt. I, ch. vii, §47.
