EVOLUTION FOR THE WORSE. IO9 



organism are, owing to the lack of adaptation be- 

 tween man and his environment, particularly liable 

 to be interfered with by the development of the 

 higher feelings of the mind, and hence- to be im- 

 paired by the progress of civilization (§ 9). 



For it is necessary to remember that different 

 pleasures are either mutually exclusive, or can only 

 be enjoyed together to a very limited extent, while 

 different pains admit of indefinite intensification by 

 combination — up to the point at which death or un- 

 consciousness ensues. Thus the greater sensitive- 

 ness of a more refined nervous system is rendered 

 unavailing as a source of pleasure, while it is terribly 

 efficacious as a source of pain. 



And our non-adaptation to our environment Is 

 also a fruitful source of new pains. There can be 

 little doubt that our organism Is not adapted to the 

 conditions of modern life ; our brains are not equal 

 to the intellectual strain imposed on them ; our 

 nerves are disordered by the hurry and worry of 

 stimuli to which they cannot respond with sufficient 

 rapidity and delicacy ; our eyes cannot be persist- 

 ently used for reading without painful malformations, 

 and even our stomachs are becoming Increasingly 

 Incompetent to digest the complexities of modern 

 cookery. In short, the physical machine was not 

 meant to work at such pressure, nor can it sustain 

 the strains where we require It. 



And In addition to sources of misery which seem 

 to be, in part at least, due to human action, there 

 are others more purely physical, which form the 

 penalties nature has affixed to Evolution. Among 

 them may be Instanced a fruitful source of acute 

 pain in the progressive decay of the teeth of civil- 

 ized man. It has been asserted that no philosophy 



