Such a rational ethics, based on the laws which condition welfare rather than on a direct estimation of happiness, and premising the relativity of all pains and pleasures, escapes fundamental objections to the earlier hedonism (e.g., those to the hedonic calculus); and, combining the valuable elements in the divergent ethical theories, yields satisfactory principles for the decision of ethical problems.  Egoism takes precedence of altruism; yet it is in turn dependent on this, and the two, on due consideration, are seen to be co-essential.  Entirely divorced from the other, neither is legitimate, and a compromise is the only possibility; while in the future advancing evolution will bring the two into complete harmony.  The goal of the whole process will be the ideal man in the ideal society, the scientific anticipation of which, absolute ethics, promises guidance for the relative and imperfect ethics of the transition period.

Examination of the actual, not the professed, ideas and sentiments of men reveals wide variation in moral judgments.  This is especially true of the “pro-ethical” consciousnesses of external authorities, coercions, and opinions—­religious, political, and social—­by which the mass of mankind are governed; and is broadly due to variation in social conditions.  Where the need of external co-operation predominates the ethics of enmity develops; where internal, peaceful co-operation is the chief social need the ethics of amity results:  and the evolution principle enables us to infer that, as among certain small tribes in the past, so in the great cultivated nations of the future, the life of amity will unqualifiedly prevail.  The Ethics of Individual Life shows the application of moral judgments to all actions which affect individual welfare.  The very fact that some deviations from normal life are now morally disapproved, implies the existence of both egoistic and altruistic sanctions for the moral approval of all acts which conduce to normal living and the disapproval of all minor deviations, though for the most part these have hitherto remained unconsidered.  Doubtless, however, moral control must here be somewhat indefinite; and even scientific observation and analysis must leave the production of a perfectly regulated conduct to “the organic adjustment of constitution to [social] conditions.”

The Ethics of Social Life includes justice and beneficence.  Human justice emerges from sub-human or animal justice, whose law (passing over gratis benefits to offspring) is “that each individual shall receive the benefits and evils of its own nature and its consequent conduct.”  This is the law of human justice, also, but here it is more limited than before by the non-interference which gregariousness requires, and by the increasing need for the sacrifice of individuals for the good of the species.  The egoistic sentiment of justice arises from resistance to interference with free action; the altruistic develops through sympathy under social