THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 313 



conduct in all orders of living creatures is guided by the fitness or 

 unfitness of such and such combinations of external actions for the 

 constant life-contest. 



We might find illustrations of this in every kingdom, sub-king- 

 dom, order, and type, of animal life. Let us, however, content our- 

 selves by noting it in man. 



In the lower races of man as at present existing, and in still greater 

 degree among the lower races when the human race as a whole was 

 lower, we see that the adjustments of external actions to obtain food, 

 to provide shelter against animate and inanimate enemies, and other- 

 wise to support or to defend life, are imperfect and irregular. The 

 savage of the lowest type is constantly exposed to the risk of losing 

 his life either through hunger or cold, or through storm, or from at- 

 tacks against which he has not made adequate provision. He neither 

 foresees nor remembers, and his conduct is correspondingly aimless 

 and irregular. The least provident, or rather the most improvident, 

 perish in greatest numbers. Hence there is an evolution of conduct 

 from irregularity and aimlessness by slow degrees toward the regular- 

 ity and adaptation of aims to ends, seen in advancing civilization. 

 The ill-adjusted conduct which diminishes the chances of life dies out 

 in the struggle for life, to make way for the better-adjusted conduct 

 by which the chances of life are increased. The process is as certain 

 in its action as the process of structural evolution. In either process 

 we see multitudinous individual exceptions. Luck plays its part in 

 individual cases ; but inexorable law claims its customary rule over 

 averages. In the long run conduct best adapted and adjusted to 

 environment is developed at the expense of conduct less suitable to the 

 surroundings. 



With man, as with all orders of animals, conduct which tends to 

 increase the duration of life prevails over conduct having an opposite 

 tendency. Wherefore, remembering the ever-varying conditions un- 

 der which life is passed, the evolution of conduct means not only the 

 development of well-adjusted actions, but the elaboration of conduct 

 to correspond with those diverse and multitudinous conditions. 



To these considerations we may add that the evolution of conduct 

 not only tends necessarily to increased length of life (necessarily, be- 

 cause shortening of life means the diminution of such conduct as 

 tends to shorten life), but it results in increased breadth of life, and 

 (in the highest animal) in increased depth of life also. It is manifest 

 that, in the elaboration of activities by which length of life is increased, 

 breadth of life is increased pari passu. For these activities maybe 

 said 'to constitute breadth of life. Passing over the numerous illustra- 

 tions which might be drawn from the lower orders of animal life, we 

 recognize in man a vast increase in the breadth of life as we pass 

 from the limited orders of activity constituting the life of the savage 

 to the multiplied and complex activities involved in civilized life. In- 



