CURRENT TENDENCIES 15 



in that the future, though we cannot foresee it, will be 

 better than the past or the present : the reader is like 

 the child who expects a sweet because it has been told 

 to open its mouth and shut its eyes. Logic, mathematics, 

 physics disappear in this philosophy, because they are 

 too " static " ; what is real is an impulse and movement 

 towards a goal which, like the rainbow, recedes as we 

 advance, and makes every place different when we reach 

 it from what it appeared to be at a distance. 



Now I do not propose at present to enter upon a 

 technical examination of this philosophy. At present I 

 wish to make only two criticisms of it first, that its truth 

 does not follow from what science has rendered probable 

 concerning the facts of evolution, and secondly, that the 

 motives and interests which inspire it are so exclusively 

 practical, and the problems with which it deals are so 

 special, that it can hardly be regarded as really touching 

 any of the questions that to my mind constitute genuine 

 philosophy. 



(1) What biology has rendered probable is that the 

 diverse species arose by adaptation from a less differenti- 

 ated ancestry. This fact is in itself exceedingly interest- 

 ing, but it is not the kind of fact from which philosophical 

 consequences follow. Philosophy is general, and takes 

 an impartial interest in all that exists. The changes 

 suffered by minute portions of matter on the earth's 

 surface are very important to us as active sentient beings ; 

 but to us as philosophers they have no greater interest 

 than other changes in portions of matter elsewhere. And 

 if the changes on the earth's surface during the last few 

 millions of years appear to our present ethical notions to 

 be in the nature of a progress, that gives no ground for 

 believing that progress is a general law of the universe. 

 Except under the influence of desire, no one would 



