702 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



part of the philosophical interest of France and England 

 has been till quite recently absorbed in this labour, 

 it cannot be maintained that it has so far resulted 

 in any systematisation comparable to that which is 

 offered in the succeeding volumes of the ' Synthetic 

 Philosophy.' * 



Spencer shares with Hegel the merit of having 

 brought, in a definite form, the idea of development 

 before the mind of recent thinkers. It is also interest- 

 ing to note that both were, directly or indirectly, 

 influenced by that complex of ideas which had found in 

 Schelling and his immediate disciples an original but 

 vague and fluctuating expression. These ideas Hegel 

 deepened and reformed through his earlier theological, 

 historical, and logical studies. Spencer approached them 

 in the more definite form which they had acquired in 

 the writings of eminent physiologists of his day, notably 



states very clearly the fundamental 

 conception of Ward's philosophy : 

 "First, we found experience used 

 in a double sense : there is the 

 experience, the living experience, 

 of a given individual, filled with 

 concrete events and shaped from 

 first to last by the paramount end 

 of self-conservation and self-realisa- 

 tion. There is also experience 

 generally Experience with a 

 capital E, the common empirical 

 knowledge of the race, the result 

 entirely of intersubjective inter- 

 course, systematized and formulated 

 by means of abstract conceptions. 

 Next, we found grounds for suspect- 

 ing that dualism has arisen from 

 misconception and ignorance as to 

 the relation of these two senses of 

 experience. Experience in the first 

 sense being relegated to psychology, 

 experience in the second remained 



as the sole business of natural 

 science ; and the one experience 

 coming then to be regarded as ex- 

 clusively subjective and the other 

 as altogether objective, a clear line 

 emerges between the two, and the 

 dualism of Mind and Nature is the 

 result. But now, in the third 

 place, we have found that our 

 primary, concrete experience inva- 

 riably implies both subjective .and 

 objective factors, and seems to 

 involve these, not as separable and 

 independent elements, but as or- 

 ganically cooperant members of 

 one whole. If they bear this 

 character throughout, then logical 

 distinction of these factors is pos- 

 sible but not their actual dis- 

 memberment ; there is duality but 

 no dualism." (Vol. ii. p. 152.) 



3 Certainly not within the period 

 of this History. 



