Herbert Spencer 451 



The new devotion to nature had its recompense in itself, because the 

 new points of view made us see that nature could indeed " hold to 

 ideas," though perhaps not to those which we had cogitated beforehand. 



A most important question for philosophers to answer was whether 

 the new views were compatible with an idealistic conception of life 

 and existence. Some proclaimed that we have now no need of any 

 philosophy beyond the principles of the conservation of matter and 

 energy and the principle of natural evolution : existence should and 

 could be definitely and completely explained by the laws of material 

 nature. But abler thinkers saw that the thing was not so simple. 

 They were prepared to give the new views their just place and to 

 examine what alterations the old views must undergo in order to be 

 brought into harmony with the new data. 



The realistic character of Darwin's theory was shown not only in 

 the idea of natural continuity, but also, and not least, in the idea of 

 the cause whereby organic life advances step by step. This idea 

 the idea of the struggle for life implied that nothing could persist, 

 if it had no power to maintain itself under the given conditions. 

 Inner value alone does not decide. Idealism was here put to its hardest 

 trial. In continuous evolution it could perhaps still find an analogy 

 to the inner evolution of ideas in the mind ; but in the demand for 

 power in order to struggle with outward conditions Realism seemed 

 to announce itself in its most brutal form. Every form of Idealism 

 had to ask itself seriously how it was going to " struggle for life " with 

 this new Realism. 



We will now give a short account of the position which leading 

 thinkers in different countries have taken up in regard to this 

 question. 



I. Herbert Spencer was the philosopher whose mind was best 

 prepared by his own previous thinking to admit the theory of Darwin 

 to a place in his conception of the world. His criticism of the 

 arguments which had been put forward against the hypothesis 

 of Lamarck, showed that Spencer, as a young man, was an adherent 

 to the evolution idea. In his Social Statics (1850) he applied 

 this idea to human life and moral civilisation. In 1852 he wrote an 

 essay on The Development Hypothesis, in which he definitely stated 

 his belief that the differentiation of species, like the differentiation 

 within a single organism, was the result of development. In the 

 first edition of his Psychology (1855) he took a step which put him 

 in opposition to the older English school (from Locke to Mill): he 

 acknowledged "innate ideas" so far as to admit the tendency of 

 acquired habits to be inherited in the course of generations, so that 

 the nature and functions of the individual are only to be understood 

 through its connection with the life of the species. In 1857, in his 



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