DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 15 



by which to explain the very changes of which it 

 is the formalization. 



When Henry Sidgwick casually remarked in a 

 letter that as he grew older his interestjn what 

 or who made the world was altered into interest 

 in what kind of a world it is anyway, his voicing 

 of a common experience of our own day illustrates 

 also the nature of that intellectual transformation 

 effected by the Darwinian logic. Interest shifts 

 from the wholesale essence back of special changes 

 to the question of how special changes serve and 

 defeat concrete purposes; shifts from an intelli 

 gence that shaped things once for all to Jbhe 

 particular intelligences which things are even now 

 shaping ; shifts from an ultimate goal of good to 

 the direct increments of justice and happiness 

 that intelligent administration of existent condi 

 tions may beget and that present carelessness or 

 stupidity will destroy or forego. 



In the second place, the classic type of logic 

 inevitably set philosophy upon proving that life 

 must have certain qualities and values no matter 

 how experience presents the matter because of 

 some remote cause and eventual goal. The duty 

 of wholesale justification inevitably accompanies all 

 thinking that makes the meaning of special occur 

 rences depend upon something that once and for 

 all lies behind them. The habit of derogating 

 from present meanings and uses prevents pur look- 



