The chief importance of pleasure and pain lies in the part they take in such choice. They are "the tests of the act being suitable or the reverse to the character (in the widest sense) of the agent." If a reform does not suit the character, it will cause pain and urge to removal of the pain by resistance; and on the other hand, when the reform is accepted, it must be that it gives pleasure to the persons concerned. But in saying this we have to remember the distinction between ethical (or effective) and pathological (or incidental) pleasures and pains. The total reaction of character on a stimulus may be pleasurable, but this pleasure results from a mixture of pleasures and pains weighed against one another. This balancing of pleasures and pains is not reflective, but takes place by a kind of intuitive act in which only subsequent reflection may be able to distinguish the elements. The pleasure or pain involved in acceptance or rejection is not the ground of acceptance or rejection. The cause of the acceptance or rejection is the nature of the reform itself, its congruity or incongruity with the natures of the persons accepting or rejecting it. "When the new ideal is definitely established, those who do not obey it are bad, those who do are good." Those who were good under the old may thus be bad under the new ideal, and _vice versa_. The gradual reform through the choice of individuals who act upon their feelings without knowing the whole aim or bearing of their conduct is similar to that where a definite reform is the end in view. It is a gradual adjustment of wills under new conditions and represents the position of equilibrium which would be completely realized if all the society were good. The new ideal is not to be defined as merely the will of the majority, the possession of a majority being nothing but the fact of its prevalence. The ground of prevalence is that it represents the equilibrium. "There is no virtue in mere preponderance; it is not that reforms follow the majority, but that a majority is attracted by a suitable reform." A new ideal arises by a struggle of varieties analogous to that in the organic world,--the word "struggle" being metaphorical in both cases, since actual conflict is not necessary to either. "The distinction of good and bad corresponds to the domination of one variety... which has come to prevail in virtue of its being a social equilibrium," and thus representing suitability to all the conditions of life. Evil is simply that which has been rejected and defeated in the struggle with the good.