activity and rest, to marry and have children.[214] This is "how the straight man comports himself." Apart, therefore, from the suggestion thrown out that a man's function may be the realisation of a type of activity complete after its kind--a suggestion to be considered in the sequel--all that we can say of the "completely-adapted man" would seem to be that he will be adapted to his circumstances. [Sidenote: (γ) cannot be shown to lead to happiness.] We have a right to demur if the pleasures of the final condition of equilibrium be held up to our imagination as a reason for aiming at it. That it is "the establishment of the greatest perfection and most complete happiness,"[215] seems an unwarrantable assumption. Yet it is through this assumption that an apparent harmony between Mr Spencer's hedonistic ethics and his view of the tendency of evolution is brought about. It is not at all certain that the result of perfectly adapted function is great increase of pleasure. It is true that all the pains of disharmony between inner desire or feeling and outer circumstances would, in such a case, disappear; but with them also there would be lost the varied pleasures of pursuit and successful struggle. It cannot even be assumed that other pleasures would continue as intense as before. For, as acts are performed more easily, and thus with less conscious volition, they gradually pass into the background of consciousness, or out of consciousness altogether; and the pleasure accompanying them fades gradually away as they cease to occupy the attention. "Where action is perfectly automatic, feeling does not exist."[216] The so-called passive pleasures might still remain. But the fact of effort being no longer necessary for the adjustment of inner to outer relations might have the effect of making the "moving equilibrium" still called "life" automatic in every detail. Indeed, if the suggestions of the 'First Principles' are to be carried out, it would seem that the moving equilibrium is "a transitional state on the way to complete equilibrium,"[217] which is another name for death.[218] So far, therefore, from heightened pleasure being the result of completely perfect adjustment of inner to outer relations, this adjustment would seem to reach its natural goal in unconsciousness--a conclusion which may commend itself to those of Mr Spencer's disciples who take a less optimist view of life than their master.