PREFACE. VU 



tists, they have not found it possible to inform 

 us what interpretation they themselves would put 

 upon the world in the light of modern discoveries. 

 Where is the cultivated reader to go for a positive 

 statement of the philosophic view of the world, for 

 an exposition of 7nodern metaphysics, and for an 

 explanation of their bearing on the problem of life 

 in its modern shape ? 



It was the sense of this want, of the absence of 

 any interpretation of modern results in the light of 

 ancient principles, which prompted the author to 

 give what is substantially 2. philosophy of Evolutioii,^ 

 the first perhaps which accepts without reserve the 

 data of modern science, and derives from them a 

 philosophical cosmology, which can emulate the 

 completeness of our scientific cosmogonies. He 

 believes that quite apart from professed philoso- 

 phers, there exists a large and growing body of 

 men, who are interested to know " what it all 

 comes to," who are impressed by the mystery of the 

 claim made on behalf of philosophy, and yet re- 

 pelled by the fragmentariness, the unattractive form 

 and the inconclusiveness of modern philosophy. 

 Thus there exists a great deal of philosophic inter- 

 est which is baffled by the difficulties of the subject, 

 a great deal of philosophic reflection which comes 

 to nothing, or still worse, leads only to confusion, 



1 Of course, in speaking of the attitude of the philosophers 

 proper towards scientific data, writers like Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 are excluded. For he is just a typical representative of modern 

 ideas which have failed to obtain due notice at the hands of the 

 metaphysicians. In von Hartmann's case there is indeed no 

 disputing the reality of the old metaphysics, but their juncture 

 with the new ideas of Evolution is too superficial, and the latter 

 have not been able substantially to affect the character of the 

 former {cp. ch. x. § 11, note). 



