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1. See as well Hastings Rashdall 1907 (Vol. II, Chapter IV), where he,like Moore, accused Spencer of conflating explaining morality withjustifying it. Rashdall also criticized quite sarcasticallySpencer’s conception of equal freedom. Rashdall was, apart fromMoore, the most prominent Cambridge idealist utilitarian.

2. J. B. Schneewind once said [personal communication] that he hadrecently purchased “yards” of Spencer, underscoring howmuch Spencer wrote on so many diverse topics.

3. Spencer seems to owe to F. W. J. Schelling the notion that allspecies were subject to increasing individuation and to Karl Ernst VonBaer the idea that homogeneity invariably gives way to heterogeneity.See Taylor 1992 for a more thorough discussion of the continuitiesbetween Spencer’s theories of inorganic, organic and socialevolution.

4. Prior to commencingThe Principles of Sociology, SpencerpublishedThe Study of Sociology in 1873, much of whichexplores the various biases, such as class and religious, thattypically taint all sociological investigation. He also issued thefirst volume of hisDescriptive Sociology the same year whichran 15 volumes and was completed by later editors in 1934 long afterSpencer died. TheDescriptive Sociology is a massivecatalogue of ethnological data, categorically systematized, fromhistorically and geographically diverse societies. Durkheim (1893[1933]) criticized Spencer for selecting random facts in defense ofhis sociological claims. See Spencer 1904 (II, 374).

5. See Spencer 1904 (II, 374), where Spencer says that his“whole system was at the outset, and has ever continued to be, abasis for a right rule of life…”

6. Durkheim also took Spencer to task for thinking that waning, narrowself-interest would someday make government unnecessary. In effect forDurkheim, stateless societies would be self-destructive prisonerdilemmas.

7. See Peel 1971 (84); Turner 1985 (83), and Carneiro & Perrin 2002(233). Carneiro and Perrin, though, also say that Peel may“overstate” his case for contending that Spencer’ssociology and moral philosophy can be read independently of eachother (2002: 235).

8. The latter essay was part of his exchange with Weismann.

9. Kennedy (1978: 101). Whether or not Spencer believed that societieswere social organisms much like biological organisms has been a matterof controversy. In his late “The Relations of Biology,Psychology and Sociology” (1896: 169–70), he emphasizesthat the analogy is not to be “taken as the basis forsociological interpretations” and that, as he had previouslyinsisted inThe Principles of Sociology, it was intendedsimply to underscore the “parallelism” of mutuallydependent parts in both organisms and societies.

10. In his earlier, pre-evolutionarySocial Statics (1851),Spencer explained ethical development, combining moral sensepsychology and phrenology. See Weinstein 1998 (Ch. 2). Also see Young1970. For Lamarckism, see the entry on Lamarck on The Victorian Webpages:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. For phrenology, see John van Wyhe,The History of Phrenology on the Web.

11. See, in particular, Hofstadter (1955: 40–1), for an egregiousmisinterpretation of Spencer that runs together interpreting him as asocial Darwinist and a proponent of traditional natural rights. For amore recent example that wrong-headedly attributes natural rights toSpencer, see Offer (1994: xxv–vi). Also see Spencer 1879–93[1978, II, 195], for Spencer’s account of basic moral rights asemergent, indefeasible conventions. For an example of crude DarwinisminThe Man Versus the State, see 113–4 where Spencercondemns poor law reform for compelling “diligent andprovident” citizens “to pay that the good-for-nothingsmight not suffer.” Moreover, those “who are so sympatheticthat they cannot let the struggle for existence bring on the unworthythe sufferings consequent on their incapacity or misconduct, are sounsympathetic that they can, deliberately, make the struggle forexistence harder for the worthy, and inflict on them and theirchildren artificial evils in addition to the natural evils they haveto bear!” And for an example of more of the same inThePrinciples of Ethics, see Spencer 1879–93 [1978, II,409].

12. Spencer considered his letter of clarification to Mill importantbecause he reprinted it partially inThe Principles of Ethicsand fully inAn Autobiography (1904). InThe Principlesof Ethics, he adds that traditional utilitarians follow Benthamin wrongly failing to deduce from “fundamental principles, whatconductmust be detrimental and what conductmust bebeneficial” (1879–93 [1978, I, 92]).

13. Also see the second footnote that Mill appended to the last chapterofUtilitarianism in response to Spencer’s letter ofcomplaint where Mill says: “With the exception of the word‘necessarily,’ I have no dissent to express from this[Spencer’s] doctrine; and (omitting that word) I am not awarethat any modern advocate of utilitarianism is of a differentopinion” (Mill 1861 [1969: 258]).

14. For Huxley’s accusationthat Spencer’s moral reasoning is fallacious because it commendsthe “gladiatorial theory of existence,” see hiscontroversial 1893 Romanes Lecture, “Evolutionary Ethics”(Huxley 1893 [1929: 80–2]). Also see Spencer’s“M. De Laveleye’s Error” (Spencer 1898: 116).

15. Also see Sidgwick 1880 and 1902for more of Sidgwick’s assessment of Spencer. ForSpencer’s response to Sidgwick, see, for instance, Spencer1881. Also see Weinstein (2000) for Spencer’s undervalued rolein Sidgwick’s thinking.

16. See especially, Sidgwick 1907, 467ff.

17. For Sidgwick’s moral theory, see Schneewind 1977. Also see thespecial issue ofUtilitas, November, 2000 commemorating thehundredth anniversary of Sidgwick’s death.

18. See Sidgwick 1876, where he likewise labels his version ofutilitarianism “Rational Utilitarianism.”

19. See Sidgwick 1902, 138ff. for his rejection of Lamarckism. Sidgwickseems to have thought well of other aspects of Spencer’ssociological theory. Regarding Volume II ofThe Principles ofSociology, Sidgwick writes that as a “useful essaytowards the construction of scientific sociology, I do notknow anything as good.” See Sidgwick & Sidgwick 1906. D. G.Ritchie likewise rejected Spencer’s Lamarckism in an effort tooverstate his differences with Spencer. Ritchie was an evolutionary,liberal utilitarian for whom, following Spencer, utilitarian practicalreasoning superseded moral intuitionism as prudent “rationalselection” replaced fortuitous natural selection as themechanism driving social progress and well being. For Ritchie’scriticisms of Spencer, see especially Ritchie 1891. Also see Weinstein2002 (83–90) for a detailed discussion of the overlookedparallels between Spencer and Ritchie. See Den Otter 1996 (93–8)for the received view of Spencer vs. Ritchie. And see Weinstein 1998(26–9), for Spencer’s critical exchange with AugustWeismann about the plausibility of Lamarckism.

20. Steiner’s admiration of Spencer for anticipating his ownversion of left libertarianism, see Steiner 1983. See also Steiner1981.

21. For a historical overview of liberal utilitarianism’s critics,many of whom have recently repeated unknowingly what earlier ones hadalready said, see the Introduction to Weinstein 1998. For favorableaccounts of Millian liberal utilitarianism, see Gray 1983 and Riley1988. Gray (1989a) recanted his defense of Mill in particular, andliberal utilitarianism in general.

22. Spencer was clearly overly sanguine in expecting that socialevolution was morally perfecting. But his perfectionism was grounded,as I have suggested, in his conviction that “empirical”utilitarianism was gradually and relentlessly giving way to“rational” utilitarianism, which his embrace of Lamarckismencouraged. If our acquired mental and moral talents were inheritableno less than our physical ones, then, so Spencer believed, succeedinggenerations would become increasingly motivated to act by utilitarianreasons as well as increasingly capable of making the requisiteutilitarian calculations.

23. For Mill’s confused rendering of this infamous dictum, whichhas so often wrongly been attributed to Bentham thanks to Mill inpart, see Mill 1861. Mill interprets this dictum inconsistently. Onethe one hand, he says that it means the “equal claim ofeverybody to happiness,” which implies that everyone rightfullydeserves, as a matter of distributive justice, some equal measure ofhappiness. On the other hand, he claims that it “involves anequal claim to all the means of happiness,” which implies muchless, namely that everyone rightfully deserves equal opportunities tomake themselves happy. He also says in his long footnote about Spencerthat this principle “may be more correctly described assupposing that equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable,whether felt by the same or by different persons.” Thisrendering is more disturbing, suggesting thatonly states ofhappiness have value whereas individuals have derivative value only asmeans to happiness. Only the second version is authentically liberaland fits comfortably with what Mill and Spencer mostly had in mind asliberal utilitarians.