ated by the other; on the contrary
[their connection lies] in the inner idea which is the ground of
nature. The _metamorphosis_ can be ascribed only to the notion as
such, because it alone is evolution.... It has been a clumsy idea in
the older as well as in the newer philosophy of nature, to regard the
transformation and the transition from one natural form and sphere to
a higher as an outward and actual production."[196]

The only one of the philosophers of Romanticism who believed in a
real, historical evolution, a real production of new species, was
Oken.[197] Danish philosophers, such as Treschow (1812) and Sibbern
(1846), have also broached the idea of an historical evolution of all
living beings from the lowest to the highest. Schopenhauer's
philosophy has a more realistic character than that of Schelling's and
Hegel's, his diametrical opposites, although he also belongs to the
romantic school of thought. His philosophical and psychological views
were greatly influenced by French naturalists and philosophers,
especially by Cabanis and Lamarck. He praises the "ever memorable
Lamarck," because he laid so much stress on the "will to live." But he
repudiates as a "wonderful error" the idea that the organs of animals
should have reached their present perfection through a development in
time, during the course of innumerable generations. It was, he said, a
consequence of the low standard of contemporary French philosophy,
that Lamarck came to the idea of the construction of living beings in
time through succession![198]

The positivistic stream of thought was not more in favour of a real
evolution than was the Romantic school. Its aim was to adhere to
positive facts: it looked with suspicion on far-reaching speculation.
Comte laid great stress on the discontinuity found between the
different kingdoms of nature, as well as within each single kingdom.
As he regarded as unscientific every attempt to reduce the number of
physical forces, so he rejected entirely the hypothesis of Lamarck
concerning the evolution of species; the idea of species would in his
eyes absolutely lose its importance if a transition from species to
species under the influence of conditions of life were admitted. His
disciples (Littre, Robin) continued to direct against Darwin the
polemics which their master had employed against Lamarck. Stuart Mill,
who, in the theory of knowledge, represented the empirical or
positivistic movement in philosophy--