Chapter VII: Hedonism and Evolutionism

1. Alliance of evolutionism and hedonism, 164
(_a_) From interpreting greatest happiness by the laws of
life, 164
(_b_) From interpreting life by pleasure, 165
2. Evolutionist argument for concomitance of life and pleasure, 167
3. Objections to this argument, 168
(_a_) That life cannot bring more pleasure than pain, 169
(α) From the negative nature of pleasure, 171
(β) From the facts of human life, 172
(_b_) That the evolution of life does not uniformly tend to
pleasure, 172
(α) Incompleteness of the evolutionist argument, 173
(β) The pessimist doctrine that life tends to misery, 175
(_aa_) The hypothesis of the unconscious, 176
(_bb_) The nature of volition, 177
(_cc_) The facts of human progress, 179
Individual progress, 179
Social progress, 181
4. The psychological analysis of pleasure and pain in relation
to evolutionist ethics, 186
(_a_) The subjective nature of pleasure and pain, 187
(_b_) The conditions of pleasure and pain, 190
(_c_) Application of the theory of evolution, 197