448 Evolution and Modern Philosophy 
defined boundaries. The problem has become more precise, both as 
to variation and as to heredity. The inner conditions of life have in. 
both respects shown a greater independence than Darwin had supposed 
in his theory, though he always admitted that the cause of variation 
was to him a great enigma, “a most perplexing problem,” and that 
the struggle for life could only occur where variation existed. But, 
at any rate, it was of the greatest importance that Darwin gave a 
living impression of the struggle for life which is everywhere going 
on, and to which even the highest forms of existence must be 
amenable. The philosophical importance of these ideas does not 
stand or fall with the answer to the question, whether natural 
selection is a sufficient explanation of the origin of species or not: 
it has an independent, positive value for everyone who will observe 
life and reality with an unbiassed mind. 
In accentuating the struggle for life Darwin stands as a character- 
istically English thinker: he continues a train of ideas which Hobbes 
and Malthus had already begun. Moreover in his critical views as to 
the conception of species he had English forerunners; in the middle 
ages Occam and Duns Scotus, in the eighteenth century Berkeley and 
Hume. In his moral philosophy, as we shall see later, he is an 
adherent of the school which is represented by Hutcheson, Hume 
and Adam Smith. Because he is no philosopher in the stricter sense 
of the term, it is of great interest to see that his attitude of mind is 
that of the great thinkers of his nation. 
In considering Darwin’s influence on philosophy we will begin 
with an examination of the attitude of philosophy to the conception 
of evolution at the time when The Origin of Species appeared. We 
will then examine the effects which the theory of evolution, and 
especially the idea of the struggle for life, has had, and naturally 
must have, on the discussion of philosophical problems. 
II. 
When The Origin of Species appeared fifty years ago Romantic 
speculation, Schelling’s and Hegel’s philosophy, still reigned on the 
continent, while in England Positivism, the philosophy of Comte and 
Stuart Mill, represented the most important trend of thought. 
German speculation had much to say on evolution, it even pretended 
to be a philosophy of evolution. But then the word “evolution” 
was to be taken in an ideal, not in a real, sense. To speculative 
thought the forms and types of nature formed a system of ideas, 
within which any form could lead us by continuous transitions to 
any other. It was a classificatory system which was regarded as a 
divine world of thought or images, within which metamorphoses 
