I 1 8 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



And yet amid this wide-spread upheaval of method the science 

 of logic has, until within the last two decades, remained un- 

 touched by the spread of the Darwinian theory. There have, 

 to be sure, been researches in plenty into the evolution of concepts 

 in the individual and in society. And the proof of the imperma- 

 nence of natural types has given a special impetus to such re- 

 searches largely because the traditional belief in the fixity of 

 these types had been generally associated with the dogma of the 

 fixity of their concepts. But until the rise of pragmatism no 

 thoroughgoing attempt was made to explain the fundamental 

 notions of logic itself in the light of the selection-hypothesis. 

 The isolation of logic has been the more conspicuous in view of 

 the development of the closely related sciences of psychology and 

 ethics under the application of evolutionary methods, hotly con- 

 tested though such application has been. The long resistance 

 of logic is, indeed, readily intelligible. The capacity for reflective 

 thought has from the time of Aristotle been regarded as the dis- 

 tinctive characteristic of man the one essential attribute which 

 eternally separated him from the merely animal. But the evo- 

 lutionary explanation of an essence is more than a contradiction 

 in terms. It is the forcible collocation of diametrically opposed 

 tendencies of thought. The consequence is that even when an 

 evolutionary origin of the thought-function is conceded, the 

 rationalist has only to advance a definition of thought, and there- 

 upon declare that so long as thought has been thought it must 

 have conformed to his definition; so that the consideration of 

 any prior stage in the development is superfluous. 



But there is another influence which has opposed the entrance 

 of the new conception of evolution within the realm of reflective 

 thought; namely, absolute idealism. It might, perhaps, be sup- 

 posed that the Hegelian philosophy, since it is a philosophy of 

 evolution, would be the first to welcome and appreciate the 

 Darwinian theory of organic evolution. A consideration of what 

 the concept of evolution has come to mean under the influence of 

 Darwinism will, however, reveal its thorough incompatibility with 

 the Hegelian conception of the process. 



