CHAPTER I 



THE PARALLEL GROWTH OF OPPOSITES 



OF all the attempts to give a systematic form to Hedonic 

 theories of conduct, by far the most formidable and the most 

 important is that which identifies, or exactly correlates, 

 pleasure with adaptation, and pain with misadaptation. 

 The great majority of writers on ethics have assumed the 

 basis, whether it was optimist or pessimist, as their needs 

 or their prepossessions dictated, and make no serious 

 attempt to test the value of their premisses. This is true 

 of the Utilitarians, who assumed as an indisputable 

 axiom, that no other principle of conduct but the pursuit 

 of pleasure and the avoidance of pain was even conceiv 

 able. The Synthetic philosophy of Mr. H. Spencer, 

 though, no doubt, it owes its life to the same social 

 and intellectual atmosphere, differs from Utilitarianism 

 in this that, by incorporating Hedonism as an essential 

 principle in all organic evolution, it raises it to the position 

 of an integral element in a comprehensive explanation of 

 life. 1 The whole theory deserves, therefore, especially 

 careful consideration, and we shall find it worth our while 

 to examine it on its biological side, leaving out of sight, 

 for the present, all reference to pain and pleasure. 



The theory is so recent, and so widely known, that it 

 would be a waste of labour, and might at the same time 

 distract the attention to irrelevant issues, to attempt to 

 present it as a whole. The following short extracts give a 

 general indication of the view which we propose to criticize. 



The first, which are taken from Darwin s Origin of Species, 

 give a picturesque account of the process of evolution, as 

 it is conceived by the writer : 



It may metaphorically be said that natural selection 



1 Cf. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 91. 

 B 2 



