Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/186

172 got the benefit not merely of the disturbance and agitation aroused by the other, but of psychological and logical reinforcement, as each blended into and fused with the other in the minds of readers and students. It is an interesting though hopeless speculation to wonder what the particular fate of either would have been, if it had lacked this backing up at its own weak point, a support all the more effective because it was so surprisingly unplanned,—because each in itself sprang out of, and applied to, such different orders of thought and fact.

This explains, in turn, the identification of the very idea of 'evolution,' with the name of Spencer. The days are gone by when it was necessary to iterate that the conception of evolution is no new thing. We know that upon the side of the larger philosophic generalizations, as well as upon that of definite and detailed scientific considerations, evolution has an ancient ancestry. From the time of the Greeks, when philosophy and science were one, to the days of Kant, Goethe, and Hegel, on one side, and of Lamarck and the author of The Vestiges of Creation, on the other, the idea of evolution has never been without its own vogue and career. The idea is too closely akin both to the processes of human thinking and to the obvious facts of life not to have always some representative in man's schemes of the universe. How, then, are we to account for the peculiar, the unique position occupied by Spencer? Is this thorough-going identification in the popular mind of Spencer's system with the very idea and name of evolution an illusion of ignorance? I think not. So massive and pervasive an imposition of itself is accountable for only in positive terms. The genesis of Spencer's system in fusion of scientific notions and philosophic considerations gives the system its actual hold, and also legitimates it.

Spencer's work is rightfully entitled to the place it occupies in the popular imagination. Philosophy is naturally and properly technical and remote to the mass of mankind, save as it takes shape in social and political philosophy,—in a theory of conduct which, being more than individual, serves as a principle of criticism and reform in corporate affairs and community welfare. But even social and political philosophy remain more or less