Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/256

 Rh and declares himself a disciple of Locke rather than of Kant. He extends the scope of the older empiricism by going back of the individual to the race. He failed to see however that the actual problem of epistemology is not the matter of the factual origin of knowledge, but its validity. In the construction of his own theory of the factual origin of knowledge he, as a matter of fact, simply assumes the criterion of truth! Furthermore, the distinction between the race and the individual is not fundamental, because the race at any given time is represented by definite single individuals. Every generation, even as every individual, must possess its own a priori faculty.

Spencer had advanced the hypothesis of the natural origin of the species, which in 1885 he applied to psychology, in an essay even as early as 1852. Darwin therefore regards him as one of his precursors. At that time however he stood closer to Lamarck than to Darwin, because he was not yet acquainted with the idea of the struggle for existence in its bearing on the theory of evolution. It was impossible for him therefore to construe knowledge as an instrument in the struggle for existence. b. According to Spencer the sphere of knowledge is determined by the fundamental function of thought, which, as a matter of fact, consists in distinguishing like from unlike. We can only know such things as can be compared with other things, i. e. relative to other things. Here Spencer adheres closely to William Hamilton, except that he dropped the latter's theological viewpoints. The things which we presume to know must necessarily be relative, i. e. they must bear definite relations and they must therefore be limited. The absolute and