estimating æsthetic pleasures can be made available. § 3. I now pass to consider a theory which may be distinguished from those discussed in the preceding section as being biological rather than psychophysical: since it directs attention not to the actual present characteristics of the organic states or changes of which pleasures and pains are the concomitants or immediate consequents, but to their relations to the life of the organism as a whole. I mean the theory that “pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of acts conducive to its welfare.” Mr. Spencer, from whom the above propositions are quoted,[149] subsequently explains “injurious” and “conducive to welfare” to mean respectively “tending to decrease or loss of life,” and “tending to continuance or increase of life”: but in his deduction by which the above conclusion is summarily established, “injurious” and “beneficial” are used as equivalent simply to “destructive” and “preservative” of organic life: and it will be more convenient to take the terms first in this simpler signification. Mr. Spencer’s argument is as follows:-- “If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase--a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; and if we substitute for the word Pain the equivalent phrase--a feeling which we seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out; we see at once that, if the states of consciousness which a creature endeavours to maintain are the correlatives of injurious actions, and if the states of consciousness which it endeavours to expel are the correlatives of beneficial actions, it must quickly disappear through persistence in the injurious and avoidance of the beneficial. In other words, those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually-avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life; and there must ever have been, other things equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best, tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment.”