ABSTRACT
All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Every suffering incident to the human body, from a headache up to a fatal illness-from a burn or a sprain, to accidental loss of life, is similarly traceable to the having placed that body in a situation for which its powers did not fit it. In virtue of an essential principle of life, this non-adaptation of an organism to its conditions is ever being rectified; and modification of one or both, continues until the adaptation is complete. A faculty in excess, is one which the conditions of existence do not afford full exercise to; and a faculty that is deficient, is one from which the conditions of existence demand more than it can perform. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.
