GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SUBJECTIVIST THEORY OF ETHICS 369
organism to its environment. Now a badly adjusted
will have an inferior chance of survival to that
organism
of a well-adjusted one. Hence conduct which tends to
adjust the organism to its environment will have a greater
chance of being stamped into the customary behaviour
of the species than conduct which does not. There will,
therefore, be a natural tendency for painful forms ofconduct
to be eliminated, and for pleasant forms of conduct to
become habitual, while only those species will survive
whose conduct yields them a preponderance of pleasure
over pain. The contrary is also true. Behaviour which
assists the performance of function is, as we have seen,
pleasant. There will, therefore, be a natural tendency
for conduct which is useful in the struggle for existence to
be performed. Thus pleasure-promoting conduct is performed
because it assists the evolutionary process, and
conduct which, from the evolutionary point of view is
useful, is performed because it is pleasant.
Spencer was not, however, content to lay down in this
general way that pleasure attended survival-promoting,
and evolution-furthering, conduct. What conduct is it,
he wanted to know, that promotes survival, what furthers
evolution? His answer is, whatever conduct tends to adjust
a man to his environment. Such adjustment may be
envisaged as a harmony between man's instincts and the
circumstances that call his instincts into play. Spencer
conceives of the properly adjusted individual organism
as functioning in relation to its environment like a welloiled
machine, responding to the demands for action which
are made upon it without friction and with the minimum
of effort. An organism whose conduct is adequately
adjusted to, whose needs are adequately met by, a stable .
environment is described as being in a state of equilibrium.
In a state of equilibrium it experiences pleasure.
The achievement of this state is a permanent goal or
end of human effort and all our actions are designed to
realize it. If, indeed, we were to ask what is the object of
the evolutionary process, Spencer would answer that, so