German, Italian and French Philosophers 453 



they represent. Spencer takes his leading terms from the material 

 world in defining evolution (in the simplest form) as integration of 

 matter and dissipation of movement ; but as he not always quite 

 consistently 1 assumed a correspondence of mind and matter, he could 

 very well give these terms an indirect importance for psychical 

 evolution. Spencer has always, in my opinion with full right, re- 

 pudiated the ascription of materialism. He is no more a materialist 

 than Spinoza. In his Principles of Psychology ( 63) he expressed 

 himself very clearly : " Though it seems easier to translate so-called 

 matter into so-called spirit, than to translate so-called spirit into 

 so-called matter which latter is indeed wholly impossible yet no 

 translation can carry us beyond our symbols." These words lead us 

 naturally to a group of thinkers whose starting-point was psychical 

 evolution. But we have still one aspect of Spencer's philosophy to 

 mention. 



Spencer founded his " laws of evolution " on an inductive basis, but 

 he was convinced that they could be deduced from the law of the 

 conservation of energy. Such a deduction is, perhaps, possible for 

 the more elementary forms of evolution, integration and differentia- 

 tion ; but it is not possible for the highest form, the equilibration, 

 which is a harmony of integration and differentiation. Spencer can no 

 more deduce the necessity for the eventual appearance of " moving 

 equilibria " of harmonious totalities than Hegel could guarantee the 

 "higher unities" in which all contradictions should be reconciled. 

 In Spencer's hands the theory of evolution acquired a more decidedly 

 optimistic character than in Darwin's ; but I shall deal later with the 

 relation of Darwin's hypothesis to the opposition of optimism and 

 pessimism. 



II. While the starting-point of Spencer was biological or cosmo- 

 logical, psychical evolution being conceived as in analogy with physical, 

 a group of eminent thinkers in Germany Wundt, in France Fouill^e, 

 in Italy Ardigb took, each in his own manner, their starting-point 

 in psychical evolution as an original fact and as a type of all 

 evolution, the hypothesis of Darwin coming in as a corroboration 

 and as a special example. They maintain the continuity of evolution ; 

 they find this character most prominent in psychical evolution, and 

 this is for them a motive to demand a corresponding continuity in 

 the material, especially in the organic domain. 



To Wundt and Fouill^e the concept of will is prominent. They 

 see the type of all evolution in the transformation of the life of will 

 from blind impulse to conscious choice; the theories of Lamarck 

 and Darwin are used to support the view that there is in nature a 



1 Cf. my letter to him, 1876, now printed in Duncan's Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 

 p. 178, London, 1908. 



