HUMAN POPULATION IN THE FUTURE. 53? 



having, at the same time, developed the intellect into com- 

 petence for its work, and the feelings into fitness for social 

 life — after having done all this, the pressure of population 

 must gradually approach to an end — an end, however^ which 

 for the reasons given it cannot absolutely reach. 



§ 377. In closing the argument let us not overlook the 

 self-sufficingness of those universal processes by which the 

 results reached thus far have been wrought out, and which 

 may be expected to work out these future results. 



Evolution under all its aspects, general and special, is an 

 advance towards equilibrium. We have seen that the theo- 

 retical limit towards which the integration and differentia- 

 tion of every aggregate advances, is a state of balance be- 

 tween all the forces to which its parts are subject, and the 

 forces which its parts oppose to them (First Prin. § 170). 

 And we have seen that organic evolution is a progress towards 

 a moving equilibrium completely adjusted to environing 

 actions. 



It has been also pointed out that, in civilized Man, there is 

 going on a new class of equilibrations — those between his ac- 

 tions and the actions of the societies he forms (First Prin. 

 § 175). Social restraints and requirements are ever altering 

 his activities and by consequence his nature ; and as fast as his 

 nature is altered, social restraints and requirements undergo 

 more or less re-adjustment. Here the organism and the con- 

 ditions are both modifiable; and by successive conciliations 

 of the two, there is effected a progress towards equilibrium. 



More recently we have seen that in every species, there 

 establishes itself an equilibrium of an involved kind between 

 the total race-destroying forces and the total race-preserving 

 forces— an equilibrium which implies that where the ability 

 to maintain individual life is small, the ability to propagate 

 must be great, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the 

 evolution of a race more in equilibrium with the environ- 

 ment, is also the evolution of a race in which there is a cor- 



