I 



THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHY 



daily compassed, in an empirical fashion, the no- 

 tion of development ; though it was fully alive to 

 the barrenness of iconoclastic methods ; though 

 it began by regarding itself as the normal pro- 

 duct of a long course of speculative evolution, — 

 nevertheless when, by its ignoring of Deity, Posi- 

 tivism found itself arrayed in sheer opposition 

 to established and time-honoured theories, the 

 resulting retrogradation was hardly less marked 

 than it had been in the case of atheistic Jacobin- 

 ism. And when the notion (born of the stati- 

 cal habit of thought), that men's natural ways 

 of thinking and acting can be suddenly changed 

 by a change in philosophic formulas, was called 

 to its aid, the result was that absurdest though 

 most logically constructed of all Utopias, the 

 Positive Polity. 



In view of these profoundly interesting and 

 instructive conclusions, can we not, by sheer 

 contrast, immediately discern what must be the 

 critical attitude of any philosophy which is based 

 upon the thorough and consistent recognition 

 of the Doctrine of Evolution ? We too, as 

 well as the Positivists, have our ideal state of 

 society, — a state well described in the passage 

 above quoted from Mr. Spencer, in which the 

 greatest possible fulness of life shall be ensured 

 to each member of the community by the cir- 

 cumstance that in the long course of social equi- 

 libration the desires of each individual shall have 

 357 



