This way of determining the evolutionist end is put forward as a logical possibility rather than as representing the views of any party. The contribution which the theory of evolution has to offer towards the determination of the ethical end, has not yet received that definite expression which would justify our passing by any logical interpretation of it, on the ground of its not being actually adopted by ethical writers. Yet it would seem that the above point of view is not altogether foreign to evolutionist morality. The preservation or development of the individual--or of the race--which is put forward as an expression both for the actual course of evolution and the subjective impulse corresponding to it, is often assumed to agree at each step with the desire for pleasure, and, when the stage of reflective consciousness is reached, to be identical with the pursuit of a maximum of pleasure.[158] In this way it is assumed that the preservation and development of life tend always to pleasure, and that the end or tendency of evolution is being fulfilled when the greatest pleasure is wisely sought. It is therefore necessary to inquire how far the correspondence between life and pleasure, or between development and pleasure, actually holds, that we may see whether it is possible for the one to take the place of the other in determining the end for conduct. * * * * * [Sidenote: 2. Evolutionist argument for concomitance of life and pleasure.] Now it is argued, from the point of view of evolution, that, taking for granted that pleasure motives action, the organisms in which pleasurable acts coincided with life-preserving or health-promoting acts must have survived in the struggle for existence at the expense of those organisms whose pleasurable activity tended to their destruction or to the hindrance of their efficiency.[159] The assumption in this argument, in addition to the constant postulate of natural selection, is simply that pleasure is a chief motive of action; the conclusion to which it leads is, that there is a broad correspondence between life-preserving and pleasurable acts--that the preservation and development of life are pleasurable. It is necessary to examine with care the validity of this important argument with reference to the attacks that may be made on it from the pessimist point of view; and, if its doctrine of the correspondence of life and pleasure is not entirely erroneous, to inquire further whether this correspondence can be made to establish an end for conduct, in accordance with the theory of evolution, by measuring life in terms of pleasure. [Sidenote: 3. Objections to this argument:] What then is to be said of the supposed "conflict between Eudæmonism [Hedonism] and Evolutionism" which v. Hartmann[160] opposes to the optimist doctrine that evolution has tended to make life and pleasure coincide?