essimism.

II. While the starting-point of Spencer was biological or cosmological,
psychical evolution being conceived as in analogy with physical, a group
of eminent thinkers--in Germany Wundt, in France Fouillee, in Italy
Ardigo--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 Fouillee 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 tendency to
evolution in steady reciprocity with external conditions. The struggle
for life is here only a secondary fact. Its apparent prominence is
explained by the circumstance that the influence of external conditions
is easily made out, while inner conditions can be verified only
through their effects. For Ardigo the evolution of thought was the
starting-point and the type: in the evolution of a scientific hypothesis
we see a progress from the indefinite (indistinto) to the definite
(distinto), and this is a characteristic of all evolution, as Ardigo has
pointed out in a series of works. The opposition between indistinto and
distinto corresponds to Spencer's opposition between homogeneity and
heterogeneity. The hypothesis of the origin of differences of species
from more simple forms is a special example of the general law of
evolution.

In the views of Wundt and Fouillee we find the fundamental idea of
idealism: psychical phenomena as expressions of the innermost nature of
existence. They differ from the older Idealism in the great stress which
they lay on evolution as a real, historical process which is going on
through steady conflict with external conditions. The Romantic dread
of reality is broken. It is beyond doubt that Darwin's emphasis on the
struggle for life as a necessary condition of evolution has been a very
important factor in carrying philosophy back to reality from the heaven
of pure ideas. The philosophy of Ardigo, on the other side, appears
more as a continuation and deepening of posi