OF THE BEAUTIFUL. Ill 



the future. He had not abandoned the belief in pro- 

 gress, in the perfectibility of the human race, proclaimed 

 a century earlier by his countryman Condorcet and the 

 intellectual leaders of the French Revolution. 



We may then ask : Whence did Guyau derive his faith 

 and his hope ? It came to him through the philosophy 

 of evolution which had found in France an idealistic 

 interpretation in the writings of Alfred Fouillee. Ac- 

 cording to Guyau the world contains a propelling prin- 

 ciple : this he identifies with Life, which is not only a 

 propelling but also an expanding principle ; it is the 

 principle not only of development but also of growth 

 and enlargement. His views on this subject are taken 

 from Biology. We live in an age when a larger idea of 

 life is gradually, but inevitably, forcing itself upon us. 

 Life hitherto has been mainly concerned with the indi- 

 vidual, the unit ; but biology has taught us that the 

 highest form of individual life, man himself, is, like all 

 other organisms, composed of a multitude of separate 

 units, that the individual organism is an assemblage of 

 cells, a society as it were. But on the other side we 

 have human society, an assemblage of human beings in 

 the totality of the social organism. This conception has g,. 

 been forced upon us by the theory of evolution ; the aryViewf' 

 great outstanding problem of the nineteenth century, 

 toward which all other problems converge, is the prob- 

 lem of society, — the growth, the development, and the 

 future of Society. The next object of human progress 

 and human development is, to bring about a solidarity, a 

 unity of human interests through co-operation or com- 

 bined energy — what Guyau calls " synergic sociale." To 



