520 EQUILIBRATION. 



progressive adaptation; which can cease only with the estab- 

 lishment of a complete equilibrium between constitution and 

 conditions. 



Possibly some will fail to see how the equilibrations de- 

 scribed in this section, can be classed with those preceding 

 them; and will be inclined to say that what are here set 

 down as facts, are but analogies. Xevertheless such equili- 

 brations are as truly physical as the rest. To show this 

 fully, would require a more detailed analysis than can now 

 be entered on. For the present it must suffice to point out, as 

 before (§ 71), that what we know subjectively as states of 

 consciousness, are, objectively, modes of force; that so much 

 feeling is the correlate of so much motion ; that the perform- 

 ance of any bodily action is the transformation of a certain 

 amount of feeling into its equivalent amount of motion ; that 

 this bodily action is met by forces which it is expended in 

 overcoming; and that the necessity for the frequent repeti- 

 tion of this action, implies the frequent recurrence of forces 

 to be so overcome. Hence the existence in any individual of 

 an emotional stimulus that is in equilibrium with certain ex- 

 ternal requirements, is literally the habitual production of a 

 certain specialized portion of nervous energy, equivalent in 

 amount to a certain order of external resistances that are 

 habitually met. And thus the ultimate state, forming the 

 limit towards which Evolution carries us, is one in which the 

 kinds and quantities of mental energy daily generated and 

 transformed into motions, are equivalent to, or in equilib- 

 rium with, the various orders and degrees of surrounding 

 forces which antagonize such motions. 



§ 175. Each society taken as a whole, displays the pro- 

 cess of equilibration in the continuous adjustment of its 

 population to its means of subsistence. A tribe of men liv- 

 ing on wild animals and fruits, is manifestly, like every 

 tribe of inferior creatures, always oscillating about that 

 average number which the locality can support. Though 



