nd.

A most important question for philosophers to answer was whether the
new views were compatible with an idealistic conception of life and
existence. Some proclaimed that we have now no need of any philosophy
beyond the principles of the conservation of matter and energy and the
principle of natural evolution: existence should and could be definitely
and completely explained by the laws of material nature. But abler
thinkers saw that the thing was not so simple. They were prepared to
give the new views their just place and to examine what alterations the
old views must undergo in order to be brought into harmony with the new
data.

The realistic character of Darwin's theory was shown not only in the
idea of natural continuity, but also, and not least, in the idea of the
cause whereby organic life advances step by step. This idea--the idea of
the struggle for life--implied that nothing could persist, if it had no
power to maintain itself under the given conditions. Inner value
alone does not decide. Idealism was here put to its hardest trial. In
continuous evolution it could perhaps still find an analogy to the inner
evolution of ideas in the mind; but in the demand for power in order to
struggle with outward conditions Realism seemed to announce itself in
its most brutal form. Every form of Idealism had to ask itself seriously
how it was going to "struggle for life" with this new Realism.

We will now give a short account of the position which leading thinkers
in different countries have taken up in regard to this question.

I. Herbert Spencer was the philosopher whose mind was best prepared by
his own previous thinking to admit the theory of Darwin to a place in
his conception of the world. His criticism of the arguments which had
been put forward against the hypothesis of Lamarck, showed that Spencer,
as a young man, was an adherent to the evolution idea. In his
"Social Statics" (1850) he applied this idea to human life and moral
civilisation. In 1852 he wrote an essay on "The Development Hypothesis",
in which he definitely stated his belief that the differentiation of
species, like the differentiation within a single organism, was the
result of development. In the first edition of his "Psychology" (1855)
he took a step which put him in opposition to the older English school
(from Locke to Mill): he acknowledged "innate ideas" so far as to
admit the tendency of acquired habits to be inherited in the course of
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