Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/803

Rh EVOLUTION 767 unknowable force ever sustaining the evolving worlds which is said to excite this emotion. In the work of Miss Simcox already referred to, and the occasional papers of Professor Clifford, 1 it is rather visible nature itself which is thus elevated into a religious object. Recent French Writers. The French thought of the latter part of the century offers us but little in the way of a discussion of the problems with which evolution has to do. The activity of biological speculation appears to have influenced bat a few philosophic minds. Naturalists .have of course discussed the doctrine of evolution, and one of these, E. Quinet, in his work La Creation, seeks to apply Mr Darwin s theory to problems of art and morality. Thus the ideal of art should, he thinks, be based on the doctrine of evolution, and be &quot; the presentment of superior forms which slumber still in the bosom of actual things,&quot; or the embodi ment of &quot; the possible development of the human type in the progress of nature and man.&quot; So the ideas of duty and virtue are to be based on this doctrine. Man is the only animal which can retrograde, and evil is retrogression in the path laid down by nature. It is an anachronism, or a revolt of man against himself. Among philosophic writers proper, the first place must be given to M. Th. Ilibot, who, in his sympathetic exposition of Mr Spencer s doctrine of evolution in his Recent English Psychology, and in his interesting psychological study On Heredity, shows himself to be deeply pervaded with the new ideas, more especially in their bearing on mental phenomena. M. Itibot regards mental evolution as depending on material, but adds that the recognition of this connexion between the two domains of phenomena is compatible with idealism no less than w-ith materialism. He would eliminate the conception of pro gress as a subjective one, and says that the idea of histori cal progress must be taken up into that of an objective cosmic process. M. Ribot makes many interesting applica tions of his law of mental heredity, which he rightly regards as a factor in mental evolution ; as, for example, when he speaks of free-will as expressing the fixed personal factor in conduct, namely, the inherited character. Of other philo sophic writers who have been affected by the English doc trine of evolution, it is sufficient to name the late Ldon Dumont, who was one of the first in France to apply the ideas of Mr Darwin and Mr Spencer to problems of psychology ; and Professor A. Espinas, who in his work Des Societes Animates aims at furthering the theory of man s psychical derivation from lower types of mind. A writer who appears to be in a less distinct manner in fluenced by the idea of evolution is M. Taine, in whose psychological and historical studies the indirect effect of a study of English evolutionists is traceable. On the other hand, the older and teleological view of the world has not wanted its defenders. The most signal supporter of this direction, in the face of the doctrine of evolution, is M. Paul Janet, who, in his earlier work Le Materialisme Contcm- porain, and still more in his recent publication Les Causes Finales, draws a sharp line between the regions of the organic and the inorganic, and maintains that the complex arrangements of the latter are only explicable by means of teleological conceptions. Recent German Writers Materialists. In Germany the recent progress of speculation, since the time of the great systems, has exhibited a decided bent towards the problems which group themselves around the doctrine of evolution. First of all the efforts of the materialists directly tended to the formation of a consistent doctrine of cosmic evolution. Their earlier writings appeared just before the epoch-mak ing publication of Mr Darwin, but the ideas of the latter 5 See especially an article on &quot;Cosmic Emotion,&quot; in the Nineteenth Century, October 1877. have been incorporated in their later publications. In Moleschott s Der Kreislatif des Lebens the whole order of things is conceived as a continual flux and exchange of material elements, which accounts for all psychic life no less than for bodily life, and of which man, equally with the lower animals, is a temporary product. L. Biichner has sought, in his work on Man and his Six Lectures on the Darwinian TJieory, to defend the new doctrine of organic evolution as a necessary factor in the materialistic concep tion of the world. The latter work connects Darwinism with the whole history of materialism. The former is a somewhat feeble attempt to attach man s ideal aims in the future to the evolutionist s conception of his past history. The writer appears to think that something equivalent to the process of natural selection is to effect man s future progress, but the idea is not presented with any defmiteuess or precision. Combination of Mechanical and Teleological View of Evolution. After the materialists we come to a number of writers, who, under the influence of advancing physical and physiological science, have sought to construct a mechani cal conception of the order of the world. Some of these have, contented themselves with sketching a natural history of the cosmos, others have connected their mechanical con ception with peculiar philosophical ideas. Czolbe. A curious combination of the mechanical and teleological conceptions of the world is to be met with in the system of Czolbe. In his first works, Die neue Darstellung des Sensualisimis and Die Entstehung des Selbst- Beivusstsein s, Czolbe regards the world as a product of ele mentary matter and organic forms both of which are eternal. According to this view, sensation and consciousness are products of particular combinations of movements (circular). To these two original principles he adds, later on, feelings and sensations themselves, which exist in a latent state throughout space, and form a kind of world-soul. Still later, he finds the substantial support of atoms and sensa tions alike in space, in which feelings are located no less than the material elements. To Czolbe our visible world, together with conscious minds, is thus a mosaic formed out of these elements, which group themselves according to mechanical laws in bodies and conscious minds. He thus adopts a theory of natural evolution which evades the difficulty of explaining the organic as a product of the inorganic, and mind as a product of matter. But he only achieves this by assuming the eternity cf all organic forms, and by conceiving of the elementary sensations as j themselves spatial or &quot; extensional.&quot; Though the mecha- j nical view of the world-order is most prominent in Czolbe, I he combines with this a teleological and optimistic view, according to which all things make for the greatest pos sible perfection of conditioned happiness in every sentient creature. G. T. Fechner. Another writer who combines the mecha nical view of the world with a curious metaphysical system is G. T. Fechner. Passing by his earlier works, in which he develops his idea of the world as a gradation of souls (including those of plants, an earth spirit, &c.), we may best turn to his later work Einige Ideen zur Schopfungs- und Entivicl-elungs- Geschichte der Organismen. Fechner takes a thoroughly mechanical view of the difference between organic and inorganic matter. But by help of this very difference he seeks to prove that the latter is a product of the former, and not conversely. The great law which determines the evolution of the world is the tendency to greater and greater stability, which law at once supplies a mechanical and a teleological conception of the universe. i Organic bodies differ from inorganic in that their molecules are in a less stable condition than those of the latter. Hence we must suppose that the original source of the