OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 



703 



of von Baer : l and he approached them with a mind 

 trained in the mechanical principles of applied mathe- 

 matics. Hegel's conception of development was thus 

 that of the historical evolution of a spiritual content. 

 Spencer's conception of development was that of the 

 changes of an organism under the influence of internal 

 and external mechanical forces. Hegel's disciples and 

 readers gave him credit for having achieved more than 

 he actually did ; similarly Spencer's philosophy benefited 

 by favourable external and internal circumstances which 

 secured for it recognition from many different sides. 

 Of these circumstances one was no doubt that the term 

 Evolution formed a fortunate and more than adequate 

 watchword for a new philosophy. Simultaneously also 

 with the scheme of mechanical development indicated 

 by this term there became known in this country Hegel's 

 scheme of mental development. In many instances the 

 two schemes were brought together, and the term 

 Evolution was employed in a wider sense by writers and 

 thinkers who were not prepared to accept the Darwinian 

 theory of descent, and still less the lifeless mechanical 

 formulae of Spencer. 2 But more than by anything else 

 did the philosophy of Evolution benefit by the recog- 



1 See supra, vol. i. p. 207 n. ; 

 vol. ii. p. 354 n. 



2 " Darwinism often recommends 

 itself because confused with a 

 doctrine of evolution which is 

 different radically. Humanity is 

 taken in that doctrine as a real 

 being, or even as the one real being, 

 and Humanity advances continu- 

 ously. Its history is development 

 and progress to a goal, because the 

 type and character in which its 



reality consists is gradually brought 

 more and more into fact. That 

 which is strongest on the whole 

 must therefore be good, and the 

 ideas which come to prevail must 

 therefore be true. This doctrine 

 . . . has, I suppose, now for a 

 century taken its place in the 

 thought of Europe." (F. H. 

 Bradley in 'Mind,' July 1911, re- 

 printed in ' Essays on Truth and 

 Reality,' 1914, p. 321.) 



