230 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



also indications in the writings of Mill as well as in 

 those of Spencer, that he was not unaware of the in- 

 sufficiency of what we may now term the purely natur- 

 alistic or mechanical view of things ; both thinkers 

 somewhat vaguely recognised the existence of an agency 

 for which they could find no room or no name in their 

 systems, an agency which thinkers of a different school 

 regard as fundamental, and introduce from the start 

 under the designation of Mind, Spirit, or some cognate 

 expression. What Spencer merely hints at is more 

 clearly stated by Professor Sorley in the concluding 

 pages of his book, as a result of a careful analysis and 

 criticism of the older utilitarian and the more recent 

 evolutionist forms of the Ethics of Naturalism. The 

 great advance which the latter form marks in compari- 

 son with its predecessor is that it puts in the place of 

 statical or fixed conceptions the dynamical conditions and 

 conceptions of progress and development, thus giving in 

 many ways a better account of the movements in nature 

 and human society. But this advantage of being better 

 able to understand the changes which have taken place 

 and are still taking place around us, is to a great extent 

 balanced by the inability of all evolutionary theories to 

 arrive at a definite standard, be it for our estimation of 

 human action or for the definition of the summum 

 bonum, the Good. We may perhaps look on with in- 

 difference or with resignation at the destruction of the 

 hope and faith in some ultimate truth which animated 



tains a chapter on the " Dynamical 

 Element in Life," in which I have 

 contended that the theory of a 

 vital principle fails and that the 



physico-chemical theory also fails ; 

 the corollary being that in its ulti- 

 mate nature Life is incomprehen- 

 sible " ('Nature,' 20th Oct. 1898). 



