Philosophic Evolution. 167 



think too severe as applied to our popular English sys- 

 tem, cannot be fully justified here. It must suffice to 

 remind readers that by Professor Clifford atheism is now 

 avowed, that Spencer declares theism to be not even 

 thinkable, and that the subordinate systems of all the 

 school necessarily deny virtue in refusing every element 

 of spontaneity to the human will. But this denial is 

 not less evident from yet another point of view. Accord- 

 ing to the popularly received view of evolution the view 

 that is put forward by Spencer, Darwin, Bastian, Vogt, 

 Biichner, and Haeckel virtue is absolutely identified with 

 the most brutal selfishness. As Mr. Martineau has tersely 

 put it : * " Conscience is a hoarded fund of traditionary 

 pressures of utility ; . . . our highest attributes are 

 only the lower that have lost their memory, and mistake 

 themselves for something else." Two considerations, how- 

 ever, present themselves at once with reassuring aspect 

 to the student of the various systems just now in vogue. 

 These are, first, their discord and the internecine war 

 amongst the teachers of these various systems, and 

 secondly, the grotesqueness of the idol which each seve- 

 rally offers to the homage of his followers. Thus Mr. Mill 

 and Mr. Spencer diverge respecting even the very founda- 

 tion of the whole fabric of knowledge, which foundation 

 the second asserts, while the first denies, to be "incon- 



Contemporary Review, April, 1872, p. 610. 



