696 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



unifying conception of scientific knowledge, resorts to a 



64. purely mechanical and geometrical conception. On the 



Contrast i i • • z-n 



withcomte. other sidc we have seen that the mathematician Comte, 

 in trying to define the aspect from which biological and 

 social phenomena are to be understood, distinctly discards 

 the purely geometrical view as insufficient, and em- 

 phasises the necessity of starting with a consideration of 

 the ensemble or " Together " of things. In this respect 

 Comte had really a correcter view of the philosophical 

 difficulty. For it is easy to trace in every and all, even 

 the most complicated, phenomena purely geometrical 

 relations and mechanical processes, whilst it has always 

 been impossible to grasp through them the real essence 

 of these phenomena ; the consequence being that latterly 

 even naturalistic thinkers have very generally found it 

 necessary to attribute the unknown but peculiar principle 

 of living and conscious things likewise to those of the 

 lifeless world. 



65. It would be a mistake to consider Spencer's evolu- 



Unlikeness . 



Evolution ** tionary system in the same light as the apparently 

 scheiHnf similar schemes of Schelling and Hegel. Spencer's 

 and Hegel, philosophy does uot deal with the origin, history, and 

 end of things as a whole. It is neither a history of 

 creation nor a history of the human mind. It does not 

 deal with the entirety of things or the Absolute, in fact 

 Spencer distinctly declares that such a general com- 

 prehension is impossible. It only deals with definite 

 restricted and related regions of phenomena, and en- 

 deavours to show how the same succession and alterna- 

 tion of different and opposite processes exist everywhere, 

 and are, as it were, the underlying mould into which all 



