tists, they have not found it possible to inform us what interpretation they themselves would put upon the world in the light of modern discoveries. Where is the cultivated reader to go for a positive statement of the philosophic view of the world, for an exposition of modern metaphysics, and for an explanation of their bearing on the problem of life in its modern shape?
It was the sense of this want, of the absence of any interpretation of modern results in the light of ancient principles, which prompted the author to give what is substantially a philosophy of Evolution,[1] the first perhaps which accepts without reserve the data of modern science, and derives from them a philosophical cosmology, which can emulate the completeness of our scientific cosmogonies. He believes that quite apart from professed philosophers, there exists a large and growing body of men, who are interested to know “what it all comes to,” who are impressed by the mystery of the claim made on behalf of philosophy, and yet repelled by the fragmentariness, the unattractive form and the inconclusiveness of modern philosophy. Thus there exists a great deal of philosophic interest which is baffled by the difficulties of the subject, a great deal of philosophic reflection which comes to nothing, or still worse, leads only to confusion,
- ↑ Of course, in speaking of the attitude of the philosophers proper towards scientific data, writers like Mr. Herbert Spencer are excluded. For he is just a typical representative of modern ideas which have failed to obtain due notice at the hands of the metaphysicians. In von Hartmann’s case there is indeed no disputing the reality of the old metaphysics, but their juncture with the new ideas of Evolution is too superficial, and the latter have not been able substantially to affect the character of the former (cp. ch. x. § 11, note).
