The Theory of Sexual Selection. 417 



the species or bad for the species. Indeed, we may 

 legitimately surmise that the reason why sentiency 

 (and, a fortiori, conscious volition) has ever appeared 

 upon the scene at all, has been because it furnishes 

 through this continuously selected adjustment of states 

 of sentiency to states of the sentient organism so 

 admirable a means of securing rapid, and often refined, 

 adjustments by the organism to the habitual conditions 

 of its life *. But, if so, not only is this state of matters 

 a condition to progress in the future ; it is further, 

 and equally, a consequence of progress in the past. 



However, be this as it may, from all that has gone 

 before does it not become apparent that pleasure or 

 happiness on the one hand, and pain or misery on the 

 other, must be present in sentient nature? And so 

 long as they are both seen to be equally necessary 

 under the process of evolution by natural selection, 

 we have clearly no more reason to regard the pleasure 

 than the pain as an object of the supposed design. 

 Rather must we see in both one and the same 

 condition to progress under the method of natural 

 causation which is before us ; and therefore I cannot 

 perceive that it makes much difference so far as the 

 argument for beneficence is concerned whether the 

 pleasures of animals outweigh their pains, or vice 

 vcrsd. 



Upon the whole, then, it seems to me that such 

 evidence as we have is against rather than in favour 

 of the inference, that if design be operative in animate 

 nature it has reference to animal enjoyment or well- 

 being, as distinguished from animal improvement or 

 evolution. And if this result should be found dis- 

 1 See Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. uo-iii. 



* EC 



