itten, the cardinal fact will stand forth, that the instinctive and
emotional foundations are the outcome of biological evolution and have
been ingrained in the race through natural selection. We shall more
clearly realise that educability itself is a product of natural
selection, though the specific results acquired through cerebral
modifications are not transmitted through heredity. It will, perhaps,
also be realised that the instinctive foundations of social behaviour
are, for us, somewhat out of date and have undergone but little change
throughout the progress of civilisation, because natural selection
has long since ceased to be the dominant factor in human progress. The
history of human progress has been mainly the history of man's
higher educability, the products of which he has projected on to his
environment. This educability remains on the average what it was a dozen
generations ago; but the thought-woven tapestry of his surroundings is
refashioned and improved by each succeeding generation. Few men have in
greater measure enriched the thought-environment with which it is the
aim of education to bring educable human beings into vital contact, than
has Charles Darwin. His special field of work was the wide province of
biology; but he did much to help us realise that mental factors have
contributed to organic evolution and that in man, the highest product of
Evolution, they have reached a position of unquestioned supremacy.
XXII. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
By H. Hoffding.
Professor of Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen.
I.
It is difficult to draw a sharp line between philosophy and natural
science. The naturalist who introduces a new principle, or demonstrates
a fact which throws a new light on existence, not only renders an
important service to philosophy but is himself a philosopher in the
broader sense of the word. The aim of philosophy in the stricter sense
is to attain points of view from which the fundamental phenomena and
the principles of the special sciences can be seen in their relative
importance and connection. But philosophy in this stricter sense
has always been influenced by philosophy in the broader sense. Greek
philosophy came under the influence of logic and mathematics, modern
philosophy under the influence of natural science. The name of Charles
Darwin stands with those of Galileo, Newton, and Robert Mayer--names
which denote new
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