236 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



in their personal, though unsystematic, creeds the three 

 different forms of evolution, the more narrowly positive 

 as it existed already in Comte, the naturalistic as it 

 existed in Darwin and Spencer, and above and behind 

 both, the larger spirit of development as we meet with 

 it in Hegel. The latter they had learnt in the eclectic 

 school of Victor Cousin, from which they retained the 

 interest for historical studies, though they opposed its 

 vague and rhetorical spiritualism. This school of 

 historical and critical studies, extending over oriental 

 as well as classical culture and literature, was likewise 

 that which trained the later generation of thinkers in 

 France, who infused into philosophy a new spirit and 

 new interests, attempting to effect a fusion of idealism 

 and naturalism through a larger conception of the 

 evolutionary idea. 



The three names of this later generation which have 

 become, or are daily becoming, influential in mould- 

 ing contemporary philosophical thought in Europe are : 

 Alfred Fouill&j (1838-1912), Jean Marie Guyau (1854- 

 1888), and Henri Bergson. The two former come 

 especially under the heading of this chapter, as their 

 interest is centred in the ethical problem, which rises 

 with them, as it had only tardily risen with Comte, out 

 of the larger sociological problem. Comte recognised 

 only late and incompletely the existence of Ethics as an 

 independent science, and never that of Psychology as it 

 had been cultivated by the introspective school in this 

 country, and as it lay hidden as one of the most char- 

 acteristic features in modern French poetry and fiction. 

 But the strength of the two contemporary thinkers I 



