214 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



system of morality on an independent basis, recon- 

 cilable with a purely biological, anthropological, or 

 naturalistic point of view. 



III. 



54. The only consistent and comprehensive scheme which 



Herbert 



Spencer. profcsscd to solvc this problem does not belong to 

 German philosophy, but is the work of Herbert Spencer, 

 who, prompted by social and political interests, made 

 an attempt to work out the idea of evolution or develop- 

 ment through all the different regions of nature and 

 mind, of intellectual and moral life. To this task he 

 brought uncommon power of penetration, of description 

 and analysis, but also a remarkable self-reliance which 

 permitted him to pursue the line of thought he had 

 chosen without being disturbed by the arguments of 

 other contemporary or earlier thinkers, most of whom 

 he entirely neglected and refused to understand. It 

 is not necessary here to dwell on the fundamental 

 formulae of his philosophy such as the persistence of 

 force, the transition from the homogeneous to the 

 heterogeneous, his special doctrine of the unknow- 

 able, &c. All these would, to a large section of 

 thinking readers, appear even more obscure and un- 

 intelligible than the fundamental conceptions of the 

 Hegelian system, were it not for an abundance of 

 illustrations and analogies drawn mostly from the 

 biological sciences which, mainly through Darwin, were 

 then flourishing with new vigour. On the other side, 



