206 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



quite modern methods in their conceptions of the 

 present mutability of species and its experimental 

 examination. On the other hand, it must not be 

 overlooked that some philosophers who are claimed 

 as evolutionists forerunners of Darwin took evolu- 

 tion in an ideal, not in a real, sense. Some of Goethe's 

 views of evolution seem to have been of this nature, 

 as were those of Schelling and Hegel. To them, the 

 connection between species lay in the inner ideas which 

 represented species in the conceptual sphere. " The 

 metamorphosis/' says Hegel, " can be ascribed only to 

 the notion as such, because it alone is evolution . . . 

 it is a clumsy idea ... to regard the transformation 

 from one natural form and sphere to a higher as an 

 outward and actual production." 



But this ideal outlook of some philosophers does 

 not destroy the usefulness of the philosophic contribu- 

 tion to evolutionary theory. It is most interesting 

 and remarkable that the division of labour and the 

 difference of outlook between philosophers and natural- 

 ists was continued up to the very last moment. The 

 philosopher Herbert Spencer was preaching a full- 

 grown concrete evolutionist doctrine in the years that 

 immediately preceded the publication of Darwin's 

 Origin of Species, while as yet, from the want of 

 definite evidence, the naturalists would have none of 

 it. Philosophers were right, and naturalists were 

 right ; they were each following the law of their 

 being. The philosophers were dealing with a philo- 

 sophic problem, one not ripe for scientific examina- 

 tion. The naturalists were exercising true scientific 

 restraint in not taking, even as a working hypothesis, 

 a speculation for which there was little observational 



