66 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



respective physiological processes which correspond with 

 each of those states. But here, again, we encounter the 

 widest diversity of opinion. One author tells us that 

 pleasure corresponds with processes of anabolism, and pain 

 with processes of katabolism ; that we are pleased when 

 the vital functions are raised, and pained when they are 

 depressed. Another, that pleasure and pain depend re 

 spectively on the uninterrupted or interrupted course of 

 the vital series which lies between stimulus and action ; 

 or, in other words, that the antithesis between pleasure 

 and pain is coincident with the antithesis between free 

 and impeded progress towards an end. A third advises 

 us to look for the secret in the motory sensations, and con 

 jectures that pleasure may be connected in some way with 

 movements of extension, and pain with movements of 

 contraction, combined in each case with associations which 

 intensify the algedonic tone. A fourth recognizes the 

 distinction in the free or impeded return to the normal 

 equilibrium after a neural disturbance. 1 It would be 

 useless to lengthen the list, and it would lead us far from 

 our present purpose to discuss the views already indicated. 

 It is enough that they cannot all be true, and if any one of 

 them is, we have no authoritative tribunal to tell us which. 

 I may perhaps be permitted to avow, with all deference, 

 that no one of them, nor any other that I have seen, appears 

 to me to be wholly satisfactory. 



A few words must now be devoted to the second question 

 which was proposed at the beginning of this paper. Have 

 we any evidence from the history of the past, that either 

 factor has increased at the expense of the other ? A con 

 clusive answer to this question is probably not to be obtained 

 from direct observation. It would require that we should 

 have the balance correctly stated for two different ages 

 at least the present, and some period in the past. But 



1 Burke s definition is : Beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole 

 system ... a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me to 

 be the cause of all pleasure. On the Sublime and Beautiful, Part IV, s. xix, 

 quoted in Bernard s translation of Kant s Kritik of Judgement, U8, note. 



