1 6 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



admit for a moment so crude a generalisation from such 

 a tiny selection of facts. What does result, not specially 

 from biology, but from all the sciences which deal with 

 what exists, is that we cannot understand the world unless 

 we can understand change and continuity. This is even 

 more evident in physics than it is in biology. But the 

 analysis of change and continuity is not a problem upon 

 which either physics or biology throws any light : it is a 

 problem of a new kind, belonging to a different kind of 

 study. The question whether evolutionism offers a true 

 or a false answer to this problem is not, therefore, a 

 question to be solved by appeals to particular facts, such 

 as biology and physics reveal. In assuming dogmatically 

 a certain answer to this question, evolutionism ceases to 

 be scientific, yet it is only in touching on this question 

 that evolutionism reaches the subject-matter of philosophy. 

 Evolutionism thus consists of two parts : one not philo- 

 sophical, but only a hasty generalisation of the kind 

 which the special sciences might hereafter confirm or 

 confute ; the other not scientific, but a mere unsupported 

 dogma, belonging to philosophy by its subject-matter, 

 but in no way deducible from the facts upon which 

 evolution relies. 



(2) The predominant interest of evolutionism is in the 

 question of human destiny, or at least of the destiny of 

 Life. It is more interested in morality and happiness 

 than in knowledge for its own sake. It must be admitted 

 that the same may be said of many other philosophies, 

 and that a desire for the kind of knowledge which 

 philosophy really can give is very rare. But if philosophy 

 is to become scientific and it is our object to discover 

 how this can be achieved it is necessary first and fore- 

 most that philosophers should acquire the disinterested 

 intellectual curiosity which characterises the genuine man 



