EQUILIBRATION. 519 



between ideas and facts; and the intellectual adaptation of 

 man to his circumstances will be complete. The 



like general truths are exhibited in the process of moral 

 adaptation; which is a continual approach to equilibrium 

 between the emotions and the kinds of conduct necessitated 

 by surrounding conditions. The connections of feelings and 

 actions, are determined in the same way as the connections 

 of ideas: just as repeating the association of two ideas, facili- 

 tates the excitement of the one by the other; so does each 

 discharge of feeling into action, render the subsequent dis- 

 charge of such feeling into such action more easy. Hence it 

 happens that if an individual is placed permanently in condi- 

 tions which demand more action of a special kind than has 

 before been requisite, or than is natural to him — if the pres- 

 sure of the painful feelings which these conditions entail 

 when disregarded, impels him to perform this action to a 

 greater extent — if by every more frequent or more length- 

 ened performance of it under such pressure, the resistance is 

 somewhat diminished; then, clearly, there is an advance to- 

 wards a balance between the demand for this kind of action 

 and the supply of it. Either in himself, or in his descend- 

 ants continuing to live under these conditions, enforced 

 repetition must eventually bring about a state in which this 

 mode of directing the energies will be no more repugnant 

 than the various other modes previously natural to the 

 race. Hence the limit towards which emotional modifica- 

 tion perpetually tends, and to which it must approach indefi- 

 nitely near (though it can absolutely reach it only in infinite 

 time) is a combination of desires that correspond to all the 

 different orders of activity which the circumstances of life 

 call for — desires severally proportionate in strength to the 

 needs for these orders of activity; and severally satisfied 

 by these orders of activity. In what we distinguish as 

 acquired habits, and in the moral differences of races and 

 nations produced by habits that are maintained through suc- 

 cessive generations, we have countless illustrations of this 



