54 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



or pain and evil are not convertible terms. An Englishman 

 of to-day is apt to dwell with pride on the recent progress 

 of his country. If by that he means an advance in the 

 arts which add to the pleasures of existence he will, perhaps, 

 find few to contradict him ; but should he mean an advance 

 in the higher kinds of virtue, it is not equally certain that 

 a German or an American, even if he were a dispassionate 

 observer, would be of the same way of thinking. There is 

 no demonstrated error in the opinion that they are cross- 

 divisions, and that we may find painful virtues as well as 

 pleasant vices. As this is precisely one of the points on 

 which our present inquiry may be expected to throw light, 

 we shall for the present keep the terms separate, and first 

 investigate, so far as it admits of investigation, the question 

 of the balance of pain and pleasure. 



Another, and perhaps less obvious, discrimination must be 

 made, if we wish to keep our line of argument quite clear 

 and direct. The balance of pleasure and pain is not neces 

 sarily the same thing as the balance between happiness and 

 misery. That a martyr is happy at the stake and a tyrant 

 miserable while in the enjoyment of the most exquisite 

 pleasures, are only extreme illustrations of a distinction 

 which is found in every condition of life. It is, perhaps, 

 a confusion between these two distinct classes of feeling 

 that accounts for the assertion, which is sometimes made, 

 that at no moment in our lives are we quite free from either 

 pain or pleasure. If we identify happiness with peace of 

 mind, the difference between that and the excitements of 

 pleasure, which can never be maintained for long, is easily 

 recognizable. 



An ingenious theory which identifies pleasure with the 

 acquisition, and pain with the loss, of force, and concludes 

 from the law of the conservation of energy that over the 

 whole universe ( in the breast of the absolute ) pain and 

 pleasure must be exactly balanced, 1 suggests another limita 

 tion to our inquiry. What that is concerned with is the 

 balance of pleasure and pain in the experience of the human 

 1 L. Dumont, La Sensibilite, pp. 85, 116-17. 



