Herbert Spencer (followed by Grant Allen, Schneider, and others) has clearly shown that the connection between pleasure and utility, pain and injury, is an almost necessary relation, having its root in the nature of things, and that it has been an important factor in the survival of the fittest. Every animal as a rule persists in actions which cause it pleasure—that is, in a mode of activity which tends to its preservation; while it usually avoids what causes it pain, that being the correlative of injurious actions. The animal has thus two useful guides in the course of its life, to enable it to survive and perpetuate its species. If this rule were without exception,—if pleasure universally accompanied utility, and _vice versâ_,—it would be sufficient to state the law of the conditions of existence and nothing more. But the exceptions to the rule are numerous, and require critical study. Some can be explained, others seem to me irreducible to any law. 1. Herbert Spencer relieves us of a large number of exceptions, which are, in fact, only the result of civilisation. Prehistoric man, according to this author, was well adapted to his environment and to a predatory life; but when, under pressure of want, the transition to a sedentary and civilised existence took place, the human being found itself ill-adapted to its surroundings. The conditions of social existence have been superposed on those of natural existence, constituting a new _milieu_, and requiring other forms of activity. In consequence of this, frequent discordances have arisen which he has enumerated at great length: the survival of predatory tendencies difficult to satisfy, the necessity of repugnant and monotonous labour, excess of labour compensated for by excess of pleasure, as so frequently happens in great cities, etc.[65] All these interversions are the work of man, the result of his irrational struggle against nature, of his will, of his artificial activities. “In the case of mankind, there has arisen, and must long continue, a deep and involved derangement of the natural connections between pleasures and beneficial actions, and between pains and detrimental actions—a derangement which so obscures their natural connections that even the reverse connections are supposed to obtain.” Spencer thinks that a readjustment will take place in the long run; I leave this consolation—without sharing it—to the optimists. ----- Footnote 65: _Principles of Psychology_, vol. i., §§ 125, 126. -----