So far we have been discussing the moral ideal in terms of its inner side--capacity, interest. We shall now discuss it on its outer or objective side--as 'adjustment to environment' in the phrase made familiar by the evolutionists. Certain cautions, however, must be noted in the use of the phrase. We must keep clearly in mind the relativity of environment to inner capacity; that it exists only as one element of function. Even a plant must do something more than adjust itself _to_ a fixed environment; it must assert itself _against_ its surroundings, subordinating them and transforming them into material and nutriment; and, on the surface of things, it is evident that _transformation_ of existing circumstances is moral duty rather than mere reproduction of them. The environment must be plastic to the ends of the agent. But admitting that environment is made what it is by the powers and aims of the agent, what sense shall we attribute to the term adjustment? Not bare conformity to circumstances, nor bare external reproduction of them, even when circumstances are taken in their proper moral meaning. The child in the family who simply adjusts himself _to_ his relationships in the family, may be living a moral life only in outward seeming. The citizen of the state may transgress no laws of the state, he may punctiliously fulfill every contract, and yet be a selfish man. True adjustment must consist in _willing_ the maintenance and development of moral surroundings as _one's own end_. The child must take the spirit of the family into himself and live out this spirit according to his special membership in the family. So a soldier in the army, a friend in a mutual association, etc. Adjustment to intellectual environment is not mere conformity of ideas to facts. It is the living assimilation of these facts into one's own intellectual life, and maintaining and asserting them as _truth_.