INTRODUCTION xix 



applied to human progress. At this point, philosophical 

 criticism offered a suggestion. The idealistic writers con- 

 tinually insisted on the special features which distinguish 

 human consciousness, and as the later development of 

 psychology has shown, many of their contentions were 

 empirically sound, even if they could not carry the whole 

 weight of the metaphysical superstructure placed on them. 

 Green's permanent self-consciousness, for example, if it is 

 not a spiritual principle, eternal or timeless, is an empirical 

 fact within the world of time. It was the temptation of an 

 empirical, and in particular of an evolutionary psychology, 

 to explain away these higher developments of mind, to 

 level distinctions of kind, and so reduce all mental pheno- 

 mena as nearly as might be to the same level. This, I 

 thought, might be the root of the trouble, and I conceived 

 that if the mental or spiritual side of evolution were treated 

 quite dispassionately, without any attempt to minimise 

 differences of kind, but setting them out impartially and 

 using them to measure the length of line which by whatever 

 means evolution had somehow traced out, a very different 

 interpretation of the whole process might be reached. As 

 I followed this line of thought, it seemed to me that, details 

 apart, the Hegelian conception of development possessed a 

 certain rough, empirical value. There were grades or 

 degrees of consciousness and self-consciousness, and as per- 

 sonal self-consciousness was distinctive of man, so there 

 was a higher self-consciousness of the human spirit, which 

 would represent the term of the present stage in develop- 

 ment. Further, if this conception was interpreted in terms 

 of experience, it indicated a point of union, where one 

 would not expect to find it, between the Idealistic and 

 the Po,sitivist philosophy. This higher self-consciousness 

 would be the Humanity of Positivism, regulating its own 

 life and controlling its own development. But further, if 



