The wife whose husband forgets only one of her twenty birthdays since their marriage often finds it impossible to overlook the single, unhabitual fault. It is not that such people crave or dote on perfection; they do nothing of the sort: it is only that their behavior mechanisms are unable to readjust quickly to another stimulus than the one which they have expected, and this failure to readjust releases energies by way of the viscera instead of along other and more pacific pathways. All this has an important bearing on the meaning of the word “wrong.” We saw that this word has only 18 significations, as compared with the 114 significations of “right.” We also saw that it is only partially antagonistic to the concept to which it is commonly opposed. And it has further been revealed that our customary logic makes a single exception the grounds for an assumption of contradiction. On the basis of these observations, then, we may declare that “wrong” refers to some very special behavior situations where human energies cannot be controlled and directed as desired, where the employment of technique to further man’s purposes has been hindered, and where “good” cannot be obtained. This, however, is not equivalent to saying that “wrong” is the antonym, the unqualified contradictory, of “right,” any more than red is the opposite of blue, or coffee the opposite of tea. _A Physiological Warrant for Ethical Optimism_ A question of considerable importance both in physiology and in ethics arises when we ask why the concepts “right” and “good” have so many more significations than do “wrong,” “evil,” and “bad.” We have already emphasized the relation between speech and conduct sufficiently to indicate that upon the answer to such a question something essential for a technique in ethics depends. A word can have a great number of significations only by its being employed in a great variety of situations, and this means that very many different specific responses are implicit in the use of our most comprehensive concepts. Contrariwise, with a word of fewer significations, fewer such responses are implied. Now we have already cited the fact that “good” and “right” refer primarily to outgoing (extensor) reactions, and that “wrong,” “evil,” and “bad” signify withdrawing (flexor) reactions. Are we, then, summarily to conclude, without any further knowledge of the body’s mechanisms, that since we seem to use our extensor system in a more diversified manner than our flexor system, the muscular equipment of the former is superior to that of the latter?