454 Evolution and Modern Philosophy 



tendency to evolution in steady reciprocity with external conditions. 

 The struggle for life is here only a secondary fact. Its apparent 

 prominence is explained by the circumstance that the influence of 

 external conditions is easily made out, while inner conditions can 

 be verified only through their effects. For Ardigb the evolution of 

 thought was the starting-point and the type : in the evolution of a 

 scientific hypothesis we see a progress from the indefinite (indistinto) 

 to the definite {disHnto), and this is a characteristic of all evolution, 

 as Ardigb has pointed out in a series of works. The opposition 

 between indistinto and distinto corresponds to Spencer's opposition 

 between homogeneity and heterogeneity. The hypothesis of the 

 origin of differences of species from more simple forms is a special 

 example of the general law of evolution. 



In the views of Wundt and Fouillee we find the fundamental idea 

 of idealism: psychical phenomena as expressions of the innermost 

 nature of existence. They differ from the older Idealism in the great 

 stress which they lay on evolution as a real, historical process which 

 is going on through steady conflict with external conditions. The 

 Romantic dread of reality is broken. It is beyond doubt that 

 Darwin's emphasis on the struggle for life as a necessary condition 

 of evolution has been a very important factor in carrying philosophy 

 back to reality from the heaven of pure ideas. The philosophy of 

 Ardigb, on the other side, appears more as a continuation and 

 deepening of positivism, though the Italian thinker arrived at his 

 point of view independently of French-English positivism. The idea 

 of continuous evolution is here maintained in opposition to Comte's 

 and Mill's philosophy of discontinuity. From Wundt and Fouillee 

 Ardigo differs in conceiving psychical evolution not as an immediate 

 revelation of the innermost nature of existence, but only as a single, 

 though the most accessible example, of evolution. 



III. To the French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson, evolution 

 proper is continuous and qualitative, while outer experience and 

 physical science give us fragments only, sporadic processes and 

 mechanical combinations. To Bergson, in his recent work L' Evolu- 

 tion Gr6atrice, evolution consists in an 6lan de vie which to our 

 fragmentary observation and analytic reflexion appears as broken 

 into a manifold of elements and processes. The concept of matter 

 in its scientific form is the result of this breaking asunder, essential 

 for all scientific reflexion. In these conceptions the strongest 

 opposition between inner and outer conditions of evolution is ex- 

 pressed : in the domain of internal conditions spontaneous develop- 

 ment of qualitative forms — in the domain of external conditions 

 discontinuity and mechanical combination. 



We see, then, that the theory of evolution has influenced philosophy 



