OF SOCIETY. 521 



of man, Spencer fails to define or to estimate according 

 to its true importance — so much so that he does not 

 arrive at an adequate conception on which to build up a 

 system of ethics. And, indeed, the ultimate defect of 

 this biological theory of the social organism is evident, in- 

 asmuch as it fails to explain not only moral progress as 

 a form of purely natural evolution, but even the prin- 

 ciples of life and consciousness themselves. It seems to 

 some preferable and more practical to start, as Comte 

 did, with the empirical dualism inherent in human 

 nature, that of egoism and altruism, than to attempt 

 to reduce both to one and the same principle. 



With Spencer this aim at an extreme simplification 

 and unification of thought goes hand in hand with the 

 destruction of the idea of final causes — a doctrine which 

 had been used in an extravagant way by philosophical 

 naturalists of an earlier generation. Darwinism showed 

 it to have merely heuristic value, as pointing to the 

 purely mechanical teleology of the process of natural 

 selection : the result of the struggle for existence is an 

 indication not of what was, according to some pre-exist- 

 ing scheme, meant to survive, but merely of what actually 

 is the outcome of the concourse of mechanical forces. 



The biological view of society has found many advo- 

 cates, not only among the numerous followers of Spencer 

 in this country and America, but also on the continent 

 of Europe. I limit myself in this connection to the 

 mention of only two prominent representatives — one in 

 the German-speaking countries and one in France. In 

 the former the work of A. Schiifiie, with the significant m. 

 title, ' Structure and Life of the Social Body,' marks a 



