Volume IV.
Number 1.
January, 1895.
Whole
Number 19.
THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT.
AS the conception of evolution is now on many sides said to be the key to the real meaning of thought, it seems in place to refer to some of the ideas which have been modified by the application of evolution to philosophy, and at least raise the question whether the ideas, so modified, are completely adequate. I shall not attempt symmetrically to survey the whole region occupied by the philosophy of evolution, but shall make only a few incursions into it, in the hope, however, of obtaining a position from which the method of evolution may be judged. Many writers, it is true, use the terms 'development' and 'evolution' interchangeably, as descriptive of mind. Although there is no serious objection to urge against the transference of a scientific term to philosophy, yet, for the sake of clearness, the word 'evolution' will be used in this article to denote a fact of the science of life, and the word 'development' to indicate the course and character of thought. On the whole, it seems well to suggest by the very phraseology that the factor of reflection, or whatever it be that best expresses the nature of the human, as distinguished from the animal, consciousness, must be given a conspicuous place in determining the upward movement of humanity;
I. The common conception that society or the state is an organism has obtained much of its significance from modern biology.[1] An organism, defined roughly, is something whose parts are not able to fulfill the real end of their being when
- ↑ Spencer's Principles of Sociology, pt. II.
