German, Italian and French Philosophers 453 
they represent. Spencer takes his leading terms from the material 
world in defining evolution (in the simplest form) as integration of 
matter and dissipation of movement; but as he—not always quite 
consistently '—assumed a correspondence of mind and matter, he could 
very well give these terms an indirect importance for psychical 
evolution. Spencer has always, in my opinion with full right, re- 
pudiated the ascription of materialism. He is no more a materialist 
than Spinoza. In his Principles of Psychology (§ 63) he expressed 
himself very clearly : “Though it seems easier to translate so-called 
matter into so-called spirit, than to translate so-called spirit into 
so-called matter—which latter is indeed wholly impossible—yet no 
translation can carry us beyond our symbols.” These words lead us 
naturally to a group of thinkers whose starting-point was psychical 
evolution. But we have still one aspect of Spencer's philosophy to 
mention. 
Spencer founded his “laws of evolution” on an inductive basis, but 
he was convinced that they could be deduced from the law of the 
conservation of energy. Such a deduction is, perhaps, possible for 
the more elementary forms of evolution, integration and differentia- 
tion; but it is not possible for the highest form, the equilibration, 
which is a harmony of integration and differentiation. Spencer can no 
more deduce the necessity for the eventual appearance of “moving 
equilibria ” of harmonious totalities than Hegel could guarantee the 
“higher unities” in which all contradictions should be reconciled. 
In Spencer’s hands the theory of evolution acquired a more decidedly 
optimistic character than in Darwin’s; but I shall deal later with the 
relation of Darwin’s hypothesis to the opposition of optimism and 
pessimism. 
II. While the starting-point of Spencer was biological or cosmo- 
logical, psychical evolution being conceived as in analogy with physical, 
a group of eminent thinkers—in Germany Wundt, in France Fouillée, 
in Italy Ardigd—took, each in his own manner, their starting-point 
in psychical evolution as an original fact and as a type of all 
evolution, the hypothesis of Darwin coming in as a corroboration 
and as a special example. They maintain the continuity of evolution ; 
they find this character most prominent in psychical evolution, and 
this is for them a motive to demand a corresponding continuity in 
the material, especially in the organic domain. 
To Wundt and Fouillée the concept of will is prominent. They 
see the type of all evolution in the transformation of the life of will 
from blind impulse to conscious choice; the theories of Lamarck 
and Darwin are used to support the view that there is in nature a 
1 Cf, my letter to him, 1876, now printed in Duncan’s Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 
p. 178, London, 1908. 
