ishes but showed the author's ability to appreciate other points of view than that from which he had started. After an interval, he produced books entitled Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences (1853) and Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science (1864). But, for a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations of a more constructive and original kind, partly philosophical and partly scientific, the results of which were not fully published at the time of his death in 1878. These results were contained in Problems of Life and Mind, the first two volumes of which, entitled The Foundations of a Creed, appeared in 1874-5, and the fifth and final volume in 1879. In this work the author has advanced far from his early Comtism, and it shows, in many respects, a much more adequate comprehension of philosophical problems than can be found in Spencer, whose knowledge of the history of thought was limited and sketchy, and whose criticisms of other philosophers were nearly always external-in the worst sense of the word. But Lewes had fitted himself for writing, not only by original researches in physiology and related branches of science, but, also, by a considerable and sympathetic study of modern philosophy. He is thus able to appeal to other readers than those who have limited their intellectual enquiries to a predetermined range. He rejected as "metempirical" what lay beyond possible experience; but he would not, like Spencer, affect to derive comfort from the unknowable. There was room for metaphysics, he thought, as the science of the highest generalities, or the codification of the most abstract laws of cause, and he sought to transform it by reducing it to the method of science. In working out this aim, he relied on and illustrated the distinction between immediate experience or "feeling" and the symbols or conceptual constructions used for its codification. He also criticised the current mechanical interpretation of organic processes, holding that sensibility was inherent in nervous substance. he was one of the first to emphasise the importance of the social factor in the development of mind and to exhibit its working. He defended the conception of the "general mind, not as expressing a separate entity, but as a symbol; and, for him, the individual mind, also, was a symbol. The problems with which he dealt were partly general-enquiries into knowledge, truth and certitude-partly psychophysical and psycho

And

logical. His Problems shows the prolonged and eager reflection of an active mind. In it the multifarious writings of many years were reduced and expanded. But it may be doubted whether the reduction was carried far enough. There is a good deal of repetition, but hardly a central argument; the separate discussions are often important and suggestive; but the fundamental position regarding subject and object does not seem to be adequately defended or even made perfectly clear. Lewes had more philosophical insight than Spencer, but he had not the latter's architectonic genius.

Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate of Darwinism, made many incursions into philosophy, and always with effect. From his youth he had studied its problems unsystematically; he had a way of going straight to the point in any discussion; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great master of expository and argumentative prose. Apart from his special work in science, he had an important influence upon English thought through his numerous addresses and essays on topics of science, philosophy, religion and politics. Among the most important of his papers relevant here are those entitled "The Physical Basis of Life" (1868), and "On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata" (1874), along with a monograph on Hume (1879) and the Romanes lecture Ethics and Evolution (1893). Huxley is credited with the invention of the term "agnosticism" to describe his philosophical position: it expresses his attitude towards certain traditional questions without giving any clear delimitation of the frontiers of the knowable. He regards consciousness as a collateral effect of certain physical causes, and only an effect-never, also, a cause. But, on the other hand, he holds that matter is only a symbol, and that all physical phenomena can be analysed into states of consciousness. This leaves mental facts in the peculiar position of being collateral effects of something that, after all, is only a symbol for a mental fact; and the contradiction, or apparent contradiction, is left without remark. His contributions to ethics are still more remarkable. In a paper entitled "Science and Morals" (1888) he concluded that the safety of morality lay "in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorganisation on the track of immorality." His Romanes lecture reveals a different tone.

In it, the moral order is contrasted with the cosmic order; evolution shows constant struggle; instead of looking to it for moral guidance, he "repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence." He saw that the facts of historical process did not constitute validity for moral conduct; and his plain language compelled others to see it also. But he exaggerated the opposition between them and did not leave room for the influence of moral ideas as a factor in the historical process.

Another man of science, William Kingdon Clifford, professor of mathematics in London, dealt in occasional essays with some central points in the theory of knowledge, ethics and religion. In these essays he aimed at an interpretation of life in the light of the new science. There was insight as well as courage in all he wrote, and it was conveyed in a brilliant style. But his work was cut short by his early death in 1879, and his contributions to philosophy remain suggestions only.

It was natural that men of science with a philosophical turn of mind should be among the first to work out the more general consequences of the theory of evolution. But the wide range which the theory might cover was fairly obvious, and was seen by others who approached philosophy from the point of view of studies other than the natural sciences. Foremost among these was Leslie Stephen, a man of letters keenly interested in the moral sciences. The portion of his writings which bear upon philosophy is small only in relation to his total literary output. His History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876) places the philosophers and moralists in their due position in the whole literary activity of the period, and is penetrating and usually just in its estimate of their work. A further stage of the same history-The English Utilitarians (1900)-was completed towards the end of his life. His own independent contribution is given in The Science of Ethics (1882). After Spencer's Data, this is the first book which worked out an ethical view determined by the theory of evolution. As such it is significant. The author had sat at the feet of John Stuart Mill; he had eagerly welcomed Darwin as an ally of the empirical and utilitarian creed; but he came to see that more extensive changes were necessary. Spencer's compromise between hedonism and evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he

found the ethical bearing of evolution better expressed by the conception of social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great merit of the work consists in its presentation of the social content of morality in the individual mind as well as in the community; but it does not sufficiently recognise the distinction between the historical process traced by the evolution theory and the ethical validity which evolution is assumed to possess.

The transformation of the biological sciences by the theory of evolution was connected with a wider movement, which consisted in the greatly extended use of the historical method in explaining the nature of things. This applies chiefly to the social sciences. It is to be remembered that both Darwin and Wallace owed the suggestion of their hypothesis of natural selection to a work on social theory. The underlying doctrine, was, simply, that facts were to be understood by tracing their origins and historical connections. How far this historical understanding could take the enquirer became the point at issue between what may be called the evolution philosophy and its critics: it may be expressed in the question whether or not origin determines validity. It was only gradually, however, that the point of controversy became clear; and, meanwhile, the application of the historical method vastly aided the understanding of the social order. In this reference, the treatise entitled Ancient Law (1861) by Sir Henry Maine marks an epoch in the study of law and institutions, and it had a much wider influence upon thought generally by furthering the use of the method which it employed. An early example of the application of the same method in economics may be found in the series of essays by Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie, republished as Essays in Political Economy (1888); and the historical side of economics has subsequently been exhaustively worked.

Walter Bagehot's Physics and Politics (1869) is still more closely connected with the doctrine of evolution. It is described on the title-page as "thoughts on the application of the principles of natural selection and inheritance to political society." Luminous and suggestive though these studies are, it cannot be said that the influence of the theory of evolution expresses the leading characteristic of Bagehot's mind, espe

cially as shown in his other political and economic works-The English Constitution (1867), Lombard Street (1873), and Economic Studies (1880). It was his insight into the actual forces, especially the human forces, at work that chiefly distinguished his treatment. Whereas even Mill looked upon economic and political processes as due to the composition of a few simple forces such as desire of wealth and aversion from labour, Bagehot knew the actual men who were doing the work, and he recognised the complexity of their motives and the degree in which they were influenced by habit, tradition and imitation. In this way he gave a great impulse to realistic study, as contrasted with the abstract method of the older economics and politics.

VII. HENRY SIDGWICK AND SHADWORTH HODGSON

These writers had not much in common beyond the two points which have led to their being placed together here. They both saw that evolution was not an "open sesame" to the secrets of philosophy, and neither owed allegiance to the idealist movement which rose to prominence in their time. They were probably the ablest and most influential writers who made independent advances on lines more closely connected with the older English tradition.

Sidgwick taught philosophy for many years at Cambridge, and held the chair of moral philosophy there from 1883 until 1900, the year of his death. His reputation as a philosophical writer was made by his first book, The Methods of Ethics (1874). He afterwards published treatises on a similar scale on political economy and on politics; and, after his death, various occasional articles were issued in collected form, and a considerable series of books was compiled from his manuscripts, dealing with general philosophy, with contemporary ethical systems and with political constitutions. Within certain limits, Sidgwick may be regarded as a follower of John Stuart Mill, at least in ethics, politics and economics. In these subjects he took Mill's views as the basis of his own criticisms and reflections, and he accepted the utilitarian criterion. At the same time, he gave much more weight than Mill had done to the intellectualist tradition in philosophy. He saw that the empirical