Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/799

Rh EVOLUTION 763 peculiar idea of evolution it is hardly necessary to speak. A bare reference may be made to Rosenkranz, who in his work Hegel s Naturphilosophie, seeks to develop Hegel s idea of an earth-organism in the light of recent science, recognizing in crystallization the morphological element. Schopenhauer. Of the other German philosophers immediately following Kant, there is only one who calls for notice here, namely, Arthur Schopenhauer. This writer, by his conception of the world as will which objectifies itself in a series of gradations from the lowest manifes tations of matter up to conscious man, gives a slightly new shape to the evolutional view of Schelling, though ha deprives this view of its optimistic character by denying any co-operation of intelligence in the world-process. In truth, Schopenhauer s conception of the world as the activity of a blind force is at bottom a materialistic and mechanical rather than a spiritualistic and teleological theory. Moreover, Schopenhauer s subjective idealism, and his view of time as something illusory, hindered him from viewing this process as a sequence of events in time. Thus he ascribes eternity of existence to species under the form of the &quot; Platonic ideas.&quot; As Ludwig Noire observes, 1 Schopenhauer has no feeling for the problem of the origin of organic beings. He says Lamarck s original animal is something metaphysical, not physical, namely, the will to live. &quot; Every species (according to Schopenhauer) has of its own will, and according to the circumstances under which it would live, determined its form and organization, yet not as something physical in time, but as something metaphysical out of time.&quot; Von Baer. Before leaving the German speculation of the first half of the century, a word must be said of Von Baer, who not only reached those ideas of individual and serial development which are at the basis of the modern doctrine of organic evolution, but who recognized in the law of this development the law of the universe as a whole. In his Entivickelungsgeschichte der Thiere (p. 264:) he dis tinctly tells us that the law of growing individuality is &quot; the fundamental thought which goes through all forms and degrees of animal development and all single relations. It is the same thought which collected in the cosmic space the divide! masses into spheres, and combined these to solar systems ; the same which caused the weather-beaten dust on the surface of our metallic planet to spring forth into living forms.&quot; Von Baer thus prepared the way for Mr Spencer s generalization of the law of organic evolution as the law of all evolution. Early Half of the Century English Writers. We may here conveniently break off our review of German evolu tionists, returning to the writers of the latter part of the century presently. The thinkers outside Germany who in the first half of the century contributed elements to the growth of the idea of evolution are too unimportant to de tain us here. In the English philosophy of this period questions of cosmology play a very inconsiderable part. The development of the analytical psychology, especially by the two Mills, may be referred to. Also an allusion may be made to the discussions respecting the nature of cause. Among these Sir W. Hamilton s definition of cause (Lectures on Metaphysics, ii. 377) is specially interesting as appearing to tell against the production of mind out of matter. French Writers Comte. In France during this period the name of Auguste Comte is the only one that need arrest our attention. Comte s principles of positivism, which re stricted all inquiry to phenomena and their laws, are said by his recent disciples to exclude all consideration of the ultimate origin of the universe, as well as of organic life. 1 Der monistische GcdanJct, p. 233 sq. Vet though Comte did not contribute to a theory of cosmic organic evolution, he helped to lay the foundations of a scientific conception of human history as a natural process of development determined by general laws of human nature together with the accumulating influences of the past. Comte does not recognize that this process is aided by any increase of innate capacity ; on the contrary, pro gress is to him the unfolding of fundamental faculties of human nature which always pre-existed in a latent condi tion; yet he may perhaps be said to have prepared the way for the new conception of human progress by his inclusion of mental laws under biology. Italian Writers. In Italy during this period there meet us one or two thinkers who concern themselves with the interpretation of the world-process. Ant. Rosmini follows Campanella in endowing chemical atoms with sensi bility and life, and he bases the hierarchy of beings in the universe on the different degrees of this sensibility. At the same time he follows Bruno in speaking of the totality of the world as an organism endowed with a soul which in dividualizes itself in the innumerable existences of the uni verse. Spontaneous generation is to Rosmini a necessary consequence of his theory of a universal life. Other Italian writers adopt Hegel s notion of the world as a self-evolution of the idea. Of these it is enough to mention Terensio Mamiani, who gives an optimistic turn to his conception of evolution by viewing it as a progressive union of the finite with the infinite. Mamiani argues against Darwin, and holds that all specific forms are fixed for all time. Modern Doctrine of Evohition. We now approach the period in which the modern doctrine of evolution in its narrow sense has originated. This doctrine is essentially a product of scientific research and speculation. It is a necessary outcome of the rapid advance of the physical sciences. Its final philosophic form cannot yet be said to be fixed. It may be defined as a natural history of the cosmos including organic beings, expressed in physical terms as a mechanical process. In this record the cosmic system appears as a natural product of elementary matter and its laws. The various grades of life on our planet are the natural consequences of certain physical processes involved in the gradual transformations of the earth. Conscious life is viewed as conditioned by physical (organic and more especially nervous) processes, and as evolving itself in close correlation with organic evolution. Finally, human develop ment, as exhibited in historical and prehistorical records, is regarded as the highest and most complex result of organic and physical evolution. This modern doctrine of evolution is but an expansion and completion of those physical theories which opened the history of speculation. It differs from them in being grounded on exact and verified research. As such, moreover, it is a much more limited theory of evolution than the ancient. It does not concern itself (as yet at least) about the question of the infinitude of worlds in space and in time. It is content to explain the origin and course of development of the world, the solar or, at most, the sidereal system which falls under our own obser vation. It would be difficult to say what branches of science had done most towards the establishment of this doctrine. We musb content ourselves by referring to the progress of physical (including chemical) theory, which has led to the great generalization of the conserva tion of energy ; to the discovery of the fundamental chemical identity of the matter of our planet and of other celestial bodies, and of the chemical relations of organic and inorganic bodies ; to the advance of astronomical specula tion respecting the origin of the solar system, &c. ; to the growth of the new science of geology which has necessitated the conception of vast and unimaginable periods of time in the past history of our globe, and to the rapid march of