Whether we consider Biology as a process of equilibration of physical factors in a state of moving equilibrium, (including in this formula the process of reproduction and heredity to which biologically speaking the life of a species is limited—which equilibration explanation includes an equilibration of forces, as well as an equilibration of motives, respecting which our conceptions are as yet very indefinite and vague,) or on the other hand consider that the facts of Biology require us to include in our explanatory moving equilibrium theory an equilibration of subjective factors with each other, and with the physical forces concerned, it is clear in either case that the dominant law of Biology as set forth by Mr. Spencer is that of Equilibration.

The place to be assigned to Purpose in a process of equilibration is not very clear. In the first place, if the biological explanations are all strictly limited to the chemical and physical factors, it seems evident that there can be no purposive actions, since all actions are determined by the chemical and mechanical relations of molecules, masses of molecules, and organised masses of molecules. To say that what we call purposive actions are explicable by physical and mechanical laws is to abolish purpose and substitute physical causation. Can purpose by any means be made lineable in such a sequence? The problem is a fair one to consider and to attempt. We fail to do it, and we think that all who have attempted it have failed.

But if a subjective factor is admitted into the problem, then it is necessary to understand in what way it becomes part of, and in what way it affects, a process of equilibration on the part of a moving equilibrium in which it is a factor. The peculiar nature of a biological moving equilibrium, and the respect in which it differs from a physical or mechanical moving equilibrium, consists in the fact that it works towards, if indeed it does not purposely aim at self-continuance by assimilation of force and self-continuance by means of self-protection from adverse forces in the environment. The coincidence of the subjective element with this tendency, in many equilibria, is suggestive of an efficient connexion. Yet if we do not understand the law of the relation of a subjective factor with the physical and mechanical factors, how can we understand the resultant process of equilibration and the necessity for the biological law of adaptations for self-preservation and self-protection? How can we understand Purpose as an equilibration?

Ethics to be affiliated upon the cosmical process requires that we should understand how purposive actions can be so affiliated, for Ethics relates to purposive actions. In the failure of such a logical connexion, we may understand Ethics on partial and limited grounds, but we do not understand it as Mr. Spencer proposes we should understand it, namely, as part of the cosmical process.

According to Mr. Spencer, we are bound to accept Ethics as part of the process of cosmical equilibration for this is after all the main conception of Mr. Spencer's great work. The apparent and ostensible conception, and that with which he has most succeeded in impressing the public mind, is the principle of evolution or gradual development; but we must not lose sight of the fact that what he proposed to accomplish was an explanation of evolution, and not merely the establishment of its historical verity. This explanation is in terms of equilibration. That conception lies behind and above the celebrated "Formula of Evolution," and by means of it the fanciful law of the moving equilibrium is posited as the ruling principle of biological change and development, as well as of physical changes proper. The biological law, or law of the moving equilibrium, rules supreme over all actions and developments of organisms: and even if an additional factor of subjectivity is present as one of the forces which equilibrate in a moving equilibrium, it is, nevertheless, subject to the laws of equilibration. It is not yet made clear how the law of equilibration, which necessitates that all forces should come to a state of rest in as speedy a time as possible, can be changed into a biological law working in the antagonistic direction of the self-preservation of a set of motions, and their self-protection against a possible cessation or extinction, with the addition of means of reproduction in view of an eventual cessation or extinction. But it is these biological actions, some of them purposive, and some of them perhaps not consciously purposive, which have to be properly shown as part of the cosmical process of equilibration, before purposive actions, and therefore, before Ethics can be explained upon cosmical principles.