Chapter VII: Part IX: Science and Morality

I

UTILITARIAN AND INTUITIVE MORALITY

Difficulty of the problem of morality.—Vivisection
and anti-vivisection.—Enquiry into the possibility of
rational morality.—Utilitarian and intuitive theories of
morality.—Insufficiency of these 301

II

MORALITY AND HUMAN NATURE

Attempts to found morality on the laws of human
nature.—Kant’s theory of moral obligation.—Some
criticisms of the Kantian theory.—Moral conduct must be
guided by reason 309

III

INDIVIDUALISM

Individual morality.—History of two brothers brought
up in the same circumstances, but whose conduct was
quite different.—Late development of the sense of
life.—Evolution of sympathy.—The sphere of egoism in
moral conduct.—Christian morality.—Morality of Herbert
Spencer.—Danger of exalted altruism 316

IV

ORTHOBIOSIS

Human nature must be modified according to an
ideal.—Comparison with the modification of the
constitution of plants and of animals.—Schlanstedt
rye.—Burbank’s plants.—The ideal of orthobiosis.—The
immorality of ignorance.—The place of hygiene in
the social life.—The place of altruism in moral
conduct.—The freedom of the theory of orthobiosis from
metaphysics 325

THE PROLONGATION OF LIFE