the activity will be disadvantageous. These are the conditions which in a general way are found to hold.
8. It is clear from what has just been said that our theory may be stated in terms not incompatible with modern notions of biological genesis. I perhaps do not lay so much stress upon biological argument as others do; this, however, is not because I think it unimportant, but because I think it a dangerous habit to rest upon a foundation which must be laid so largely upon hypotheses. But taking the argument for what it is worth I think it not too great a strain upon our credibility to surmise that the first general undifferentiated sense, which has now disappeared in its differentiations, may have had attached to it from the very start the capacity for pain under excessive stimulations corresponding to the relation involved in the tendency to discontinuance of the coincident neural activities; in the second place to surmise, as added to this pain capacity, the capacity for pleasure whenever it became of advantage to the organism as a whole that the activities coincident with this general sense should have the capacity of continuance. As the senses became differentiated, those would appear with emphasis of their pleasure capacity where, in the long run, the continuance of the activities involved would be advantageous to the individual, and conversely, mutatis mutandis, as to pain. But evidently the pleasure and pain would be directly connected with the capacity of the organ active in producing the sensation and not directly with the welfare of the individual. An indirect connection on wide lines between pain and pleasure and disadvantage and advantage respectively to the individual would, however, soon be brought about, because the individuals that took pleasure in and continued disadvantageous actions, and that found pain in and tended to discontinue advantageous actions, would be in time eliminated. The connection would be so indirect, however, that the law could not be expected to be without numerous exceptions, and we should look to find exactly what we do find, vis. those anomalous cases, which have given so much trouble to theorists, where sweets mean death and pains mean health to the individual, while indicating, under our view, actions respectively
