The nearest thing to an authoritative and universal rule which we get in the "Data of Ethics" is the assertion that "the life of the social organism must, as a rule, rank above the lives of its units." Supposing even that society is in any but a figurative sense an organism with a life of its own distinct from those of its members, this canon, as it stands in Mr. Spencer's pages, appears to be almost as much a dogma and as little supported by demonstration as anything in the Athanasian Creed. Prove to a man, if you can, that to enjoy his own pleasure he must avoid interfering with the pleasure of others, obtain the co-operation of his fellows, and pay a certain tribute to the interests of society. But to tell him that, where there is a question between the life or the pleasure of the social organism and his life or pleasure, the claim of the social organism must rank first, is to tell him what, we venture to think, you will not be able to prove with any arguments supplied by the "Data of Ethics," the reasoning of which, like the promptings of Nature apart from theism, point rather the other way. The chapter on the "Sociological View of Ethics" is not, at least I have not found it, the clearest in a book generally remarkable for perspicuity: but, if I do not mistake, it forecasts a diminution of the claims of society on the allegiance of the individual man, in proportion as militarism gives way to industry, and the need of protection against the violence of other social organisms becomes less.

In one remarkable passage Mr. Spencer seems practically to avow the inability of his principle to settle what have hitherto been deemed the plainest questions of morality: