performance. But nature contains a logic of its own which precludes absurdity. True, the antagonism of forces likewise plays an important part; but this antagonism is the very condition of the potential discharges of motion and experience. The value of life and the attainment of its higher planes depend wholly upon the differences and rhythms of nature. The profound satisfaction which life furnishes would be impossible without the cruel, the bitter and the painful (Das Werth des Lebens, 1865).
Dühring, like Comte, finds the germinal principle of the moral life in the instinct of sympathy. The sufferings of others have a direct effect upon individual feelings, and its influence increases with civilization. Moral progress however consists both in individualization and socialization. Crude force is still the governing principle in existing states, but in the free organizations of the future the interest of the individual will be devoted directly to his work, not merely to the products of his work. The ideal of the future does not consists in socialistic concentration, but in the growth of free industrial communities. Dühring anchors his hope to a progressive evolution by the progressive unfolding and survival of the good, and he strongly opposes Darwin's struggle for existence and Marx's catastrophe theory.—The contemplation of the majestic order of the universe, which has made such an evolution possible, begets a universal affection,—the equivalent of the religious sentiment of the past (Ersatz der Religion durch Vollkommneres, 1883).
2. In Italy a period of depression and lassitude followed the promising mental activity of the period of the Renaissance, and the general history of philosophy has
