ngs any
better than that which exists. While absolute morality owes to
expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into utopian
absurdities; expediency is indebted to absolute morality for all
stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested in
ascertaining what is _relatively right_; it still follows that we must
first consider what is _absolutely right_; since the one conception
presupposes the other. That is to say, though we must ever aim to do
what is best for the present times, yet we must ever bear in mind what
is abstractedly best; so that the changes we make may be _towards_ it,
and not _away_ from it.'

By the word _absolute_ as thus applied, Mr. Spencer does not mean to
imply a right and wrong existing apart from Humanity and its relations.
Agreeing with Utilitarians in the belief that happiness is the end, and
that the conduct called moral is simply the best means of attaining it,
he of course does not assert that there is a morality which is absolute
in the sense of being true out of relation to human existence. By
absolute morality as distinguished from relative, he here means the
mode of conduct which, under the conditions arising from social union,
must be pursued to achieve the greatest welfare of each and all. He
holds, that the laws of Life, physiologically considered, being fixed,
it necessarily follows that when a number of individuals have to live
in social union, which necessarily involves fixity of conditions in the
shape of mutual interferences and limitations, there result certain
fixed principles by which conduct must be restricted, before the
greatest sum of happiness can be achieved. These principles constitute
what Mr. Spencer distinguishes as absolute Morality; and the absolutely
moral man is the man who conforms to these principles, not by external
coercion nor self-coercion, but who acts them out spontaneously.

To be fully understood, this conception must be taken along with the
general theory of Evolution. Mr. Spencer argues that all things
whatever are inevitably tending towards equilibrium; and that
consequently the progress of mankind cannot cease until there is
equilibrium between the human constitution and the conditions of human
existence. Or, as he argues in _First Principles_ (Second Edition, p.
512), 'The adaptation of man's nature to the conditions of his
existence cannot cease until the internal forces which we know as
feelings are in equilibrium wit