286 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



himself embraced in a definite form before the idea had 



received general currency through the writings of Darwin 



and the watchwords of the Darwinian school Herbert 



59. Spencer's psychology consists in an application of the 



evolution*! metaphysical canons of the theorv of evolution to the 



psychology. 



phenomena of mental life, which he maintains cannot be 

 understood if we confine ourselves to a study of the 

 individual mind. He had come to this study from that 

 of human society, its history and progress. The latter 

 he had attempted to analyse and comprehend by resorting 

 to biological analogies. He thus illustrates the two 

 points just referred to, viz. : that the study of the 

 individual mental life must be enlivened by gaining from 

 elsewhere the clue to its nature and significance, as also 

 by looking at its collective existence in human society. 

 The psychology of Herbert Spencer is an instructive 

 example how, alongside if not in the midst of in- 

 ductive and introspective schools of thought, a meta- 

 physical construction could grow and flourish with much 

 greater practical results and popular influence than the 

 more cautious and sober teachings of those schools could 

 ever boast of. 



The historical antecedents of the two other philosophies, 

 idealise ^ those of von Hartmann in Germany and M. Fouillee 

 3nrt' nt * in France, are to be found in the idealistic philosophy. 

 Fouuiee. In the case of M. Fouillee we have to go back to the 

 source of all idealism, the ideology of Plato. His object 

 is "to bring Plato's ideas from heaven on to the earth 

 and to reconcile idealism and materialism." His psy- 

 chology has been regarded as the best exposition of the 

 psychology of voluntarism, i.e., of that tendency in modern 



