VALUES AND FINAL CAUSES 95 



discord is much more pronounced. There is, moreover, 

 a third form of evolution, besides the stationary and forward 

 processes of change. That is degeneration. When an 

 organism degenerates, it loses in complexity ; and, at the 

 same time, both the number of its adaptations and its feelings, 

 whether they be of pleasure or of pain, lose in variety and 

 in intensity. Such a process is along convergent lines : it 

 is in the direction of harmony, and, if persisted in, would 

 probably, sooner or later, attain to the harmony of com 

 plete indifference. 



It is not necessary for our argument to show that the 

 increase of opposites has been exactly or nearly equal, 

 though that seems the most probable conclusion. Unless 

 one of the pair has displayed a clear tendency to decrease, 

 there is no reason to expect that it will ever be overpowered 

 by the other. The most determined partisan, whichever 

 colours he may wear, will not venture to assert that there 

 has been an actual decrease, either of pains, or of pleasures, 

 or of dangers, or of immunities, if man is compared with the 

 lower classes of organisms. On the contrary, it must be 

 admitted by an optimist that the pains, and by a pessimist 

 that the pleasures, of the higher organisms are incalculably 

 greater than those of the earlier forms of life, from which 

 the former are presumably descended ; and that, in the 

 intermediate process, the increase on both sides of the 

 account has been fairly continuous. 



Pleasure and pain are here instanced because they are 

 the factors which have engaged the most attention ; but the 

 same law may be observed in the case of all, or nearly all, 

 contrasted pairs of opposites, the most comprehensive 

 formula for the expression of the law being that both adapta 

 tion and misadaptation have increased, and that there is 

 nothing to show that the increase has been greater on one 

 side than on the other. 



These considerations, for which I have already given 

 what appears to me to be a sufficient justification, are in 

 direct contradiction to the opinion that the end of the 

 processes of nature is either harmony or unmixed happiness. 



