OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 707 



through the influence of other surrounding but equally 

 finite spheres of existence. The question of the signifi- 

 cance, the life and meaning of the whole, remained 

 unanswered and unanswerable ; coinciding, according to 

 Spencer's own admission, with the unknowable ground 

 of everything, the Absolute. 



During the last quarter of the nineteenth century 72. 



Defects of 



this defect of any and every purely mechanical scheme mechanical 



scheme of 



of evolution became more and more evident, and this ^cogni^ed 

 through the independent labour of thinkers in all three countries! 6 

 countries, and as much through the movement of scientific 

 as through that of philosophical thought. It is not too 

 much to say that it has been a distinct aim of the latter 

 to enlarge the conception of evolution so as to admit of 

 a principle of progress. To express it in scientific 

 language, the conception of a conservative system is not 

 applicable either to the universe as a whole or to such 

 finite portions of it as contain the phenomena of life and 

 mind. Nevertheless, the naturalism and agnosticism in 

 Spencer's thought have acted as a great stimulus to philo- 

 sophical reasoning both in France and in this country, 

 not to speak of America, in the intellectual develop- 

 ment of which we are, in this Work, only indirectly 

 interested. 



The most original attempts to modify the evolutionary 

 theories of Spencer and Darwin so as to make them 

 more applicable to mental and especially moral and 

 social phenomena, are to be found in the recent philo- 

 sophical literature of France. In this country that 73. 

 school of thought which undertook to explain and, as T. 

 H. Green put it, do over again the work which Hegel 



