8O FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART II 



formity to ends." 1 Moreover, the postulate under- 

 lying such a view in Lotze's opinion, of course, a 

 mere logical abstract possibility ; in no wise a fact 

 is given on the previous page : " If we take for 

 granted that an indefinite multitude of different ele- 

 ments act upon one another entirely in accordance 

 with mechanical laws, and that they were aboriginally 

 in reciprocal motions, which were not regulated by 

 any design." This postulate, named by Lotze only 

 that he may presently dismiss it as metaphysically 

 untenable, 2 is identical, not perhaps with Spencer's, 

 but certainly with his disciple Fiske's, " the mere co- 

 existence of innumerable discrete bodies in the uni- 

 verse, exerting attractive and repulsive forces upon 

 each other." 3 Spencer, perhaps characteristically, 

 prefers to give us vague glimpses of a "homogeneous " 

 though highly "unstable " continuum in space, finite in 

 its dimensions, as the origin of all change. We con- 

 clude, therefore : a cosmic philosophy might perhaps 

 be grounded on a more than Darwinian apotheosis of 

 competition. But no modern has tried to work out 

 such a scheme unless Lotze in one of his paradoxi- 

 cal moods as the candid friend of theism. Fiske might 

 have been tempted in that direction, but was not. 

 Spencer did not even cast one glance towards it. 



"Only one part of Darwin's theories is specially 

 important to Spencer the Lamarckian doctrine of 

 use-inheritance. That is the basis of Spencer's 

 reconciliation of Intuitionalism with Empiricism. We 



1 Outlines of Philosophy of Religion, tr. p. 20. 



2 The many elements reducing themselves to elements in one great 

 system ; the separate processes to one many-sided evolution. 



9 Cosmic Philosophy, ii. p. 867. 



