CHAPTER V. Some Conditions of Evolution

SOME CONDITIONS OF EVOLUTION

§ 1. The concept of evolution an attempt to interpret natural processes in terms of individual growth. § 2. Evolution means change culminating in an end which is the result of the process and is qualitatively new. The concept is thus teleological. § 3. Evolution, being teleological, is essentially either progress or degeneration. If it is more than illusion, there must be real ends in the physical order. And ends can only be real as subjective interests of sentient beings which are actualised by the process of change. § 4. Thus all evolution must take place within an individual subject. § 5. Further, the subject of evolution must be a finite individual. All attempts to make “evolution” a property of the whole of Reality lead to the infinite regress. § 6. The distinction between progressive evolution and degeneration has an “objective” basis in the metaphysical distinction between higher and lower degrees of individuality. § 7. In the evolutionary process, old individuals disappear and fresh ones originate. Hence evolution is incompatible with the view that Reality consists of a plurality of ultimately independent finite individuals.

§ 1. We saw, in the first chapter of the present Book, that evolution or orderly development is a fundamental characteristic of the processes which compose the physical order as apprehended by the various empirical sciences. For the purposes of Mechanics and Mechanical Physics, indeed, we have no need to look upon Nature as the scene of development; for these sciences it is enough to conceive of it as a vast complex of changes of configuration and transformations of energy, connected by regular uniformities of sequence. As soon, however, as we come to regard Nature from the standpoint of those sciences which explicitly recognise differences of quality, as well as differences in position and quantity, among the objects with which they deal, this narrowly mechanistic conception of natural processes becomes inadequate. With the notion of physical processes as productive of changes of quality we are inevitably led to think of the physical order as a world in which the qualitatively new is derived from, or developed out of, the previously familiar by fixed lines of deviation and under determinate conditions.

Naturally enough, it is from the biological sciences, in which the study of organic growth plays so prominent a part, that the impulse to conceive of physical change as development originally comes. As long ago as the fourth century B.C., Aristotle had taken the concept of growth or development as the foundation of the most influential scheme of metaphysical construction yet produced in the whole history of speculation. In Aristotle’s view, however, the process of development was regarded as strictly confined within the limits of the individual life. The individual organism, beginning its existence as an undeveloped germ or potentiality, gradually unfolds itself in a series of successive stages of growth, which culminates at the period of complete maturity. But the individual germ itself is a product or secretion derived from a pre-existing mature individual of the same type as that into which this germ will ultimately grow. The number of distinct typical processes of growth is thus strictly determined, and each such process implies the previous existence of its completed result. In other words, the boundaries between species are fixed and ultimate; there can be no beginning in time of the existence of a new species, and therefore no origination of new species by development from other types. As Aristotle epigrammatically puts it, “It takes a man to beget a man.”

A further point of weakness in the Aristotelian theory is the absence of any definite account of the machinery by which the process of growth is effected. We learn, indeed, that the latent capacity of the organic germ to develop according to a certain specific type is stimulated into activity by influences contained in the environment, but the precise nature of this process of stimulation was necessarily left in obscurity, in consequence of the imperfect knowledge possessed by Aristotle of the minute character of natural processes in general.

In the evolutionary theories of modern biology, it is precisely the problems of the origination of new species, and of the special character of the relations between the species and its environment by which this process is conditioned, that have attracted almost exclusive attention. And, with the steadily increasing success of evolutionary hypotheses in dealing with biological problems, there has naturally arisen a tendency to extend the application of the general concept of evolution far beyond the sphere in which it first originated. We have now not only more or less well-accredited hypotheses of the production by evolution of our chemical elements, but even ambitious philosophical constructions which treat the concept of evolution as the one and only key to all the problems of existence. In the presence of these far-reaching applications of evolutionary ideas, it becomes all the more necessary to bear in mind, in our estimate of the worth of the evolution concept, that its logical character remains unaltered by the extension of its sphere of applicability; it is still, in spite of all minor modifications, essentially an attempt to interpret natural processes in general in terms of individual growth.

We are not, of course, in the present chapter in any way concerned with the details of any one particular theory as to the special conditions which determine the course of organic or other evolution. What those conditions in any special case are, is a question, in the first instance, for that particular branch of empirical science which deals with the description of the particular aspect of the processes of the physical order under investigation. And though it would be a proper question for a complete Philosophy of Nature how the details of a well-established scientific theory must be interpreted so as to harmonise with the general metaphysical implications of the physical order, it is for many reasons premature to raise such a question in the present state of our actual knowledge of the details of evolutionary processes. All that can be done here is to ask what in general are the logical implications involved in thinking of a process as an evolution at all, and how those implications are related to our general interpretation of the physical order.

§ 2. Evolution obviously involves the two concepts, already criticised at length, of change and the dependence of the order and direction of change upon determinate conditions. But an evolutionary process is never a mere orderly sequence of changes. For instance, the changes of configuration and exchanges of energy which take place when work is done in a material system, conceived as composed of moving masses without any element of secondary quality, are not properly to be called a process of evolution. They are not an evolution or development, because, so long as we keep to the strictly kinetic view of natural processes as consisting solely in the varying configuration of systems of mass-particles, the end of the process is qualitatively undistinguishable from its beginning; nothing qualitatively new has emerged as its result. Or rather, to speak with more accuracy, the process has really no end and no unity of its own. It is only by an entirely arbitrary limitation of view, due to purely subjective interests of our own, that we isolate just this collection of mass-particles from the larger aggregate of such particles which form the physical order as regarded from the strictly kinetic standpoint, and call it one system; and again, it is with equal arbitrariness that we determine the point of time beyond which we shall cease to follow the system’s changes of configuration. In the indefinitely prolonged series of successive configurations there is no stage which can properly be called final. Hence from the rigidly mechanistic point of view of Kinetics and Kinematics there are no evolutions or developments in the universe, there is only continuous change.

Development or evolution, then, definitely implies the culmination of a process of change in the establishment of a state of things which is relatively new, and implies, further, that the relatively new state of things may truly be regarded as the end or completion of this special process of change. Thus the fundamental peculiarity of all evolutionary ideas is that they are essentially teleological; the changes which are evolutions are all changes thought of as throughout relative to an end or result. Except in so far as a process of change is thus essentially relative to the result in which it culminates, there is no sense in calling it a development. We may see this even by considering the way in which the concepts of evolution and development are used in the various departments of Physics. We sometimes speak of a chemical process as marked by the “evolution” of heat, or again we say that, if the second law of Thermo-dynamics is rigidly and universally true, the physical universe must be in a process of evolution towards a stage in which none of its energy will be available for work. But we can only attach a meaning to such language so long as we allow ourselves to retain the common-sense point of view according to which there are real qualitative differences between what abstract Mechanics treats as equivalent forms of “energy.”

We can speak of the evolution of heat, just because we, consciously or unconsciously, think of heat as being really, what it is for our senses, something qualitatively new and distinct from the other kinds of energy which are converted into it by the chemical process. So we can intelligibly talk of the gradual conversion of one form of energy into another as an evolution only so long as we regard the various forms of energy as qualitatively different, and are therefore entitled to look upon the complete conversion of the one into another as the qualitatively new result of a process which is therefore terminated by its complete establishment. From the standpoint of the physical theories which regard the distinction between the forms of energy as only “subjective,” there would be no sense in regarding that particular stage in the course of events at which one form of energy disappeared as the end or result of a process which terminates in it, and thus such terms as evolution and development would lose their meaning. Only the establishment of the qualitatively new can form a real end or result, and so afford a logical basis for the recognition of the changes in the physical order as distinct processes of development.

§ 3. This essentially teleological character of development is emphasised in the language of the biological sciences by the constant use of the concepts of progress and degeneration. For biology an evolution is essentially a process either in the progressive or in the regressive direction. Every evolution is an advance to a “higher” or a decline to a “lower” state of development. Now progress and regress are only possible where the process of change is regarded as throughout relative to the end to be attained by the process. Exactly how we conceive this end, which serves us as a standard for distinguishing progress from degeneration, is a secondary question; the point of fundamental importance is that, except in reference to such an end, there can be no distinction at all between progressive and retrogressive change. Thus, unless there are really ends in the physical order which determine the processes of change that culminate in their actual establishment, evolution cannot be real. If the ends, by the establishment of which we estimate progress in development, are merely arbitrary standards of our own to which nothing in external reality corresponds, then the physical order must really be a mere succession of changes which are in no true sense developments, and the whole concept of nature as marked by development will be a mere human delusion. And, on the contrary, if there is any truth in the great scientific conceptions of evolution, there must be real ends in the physical order.

Now, there is only one intelligible way in which we can think of a process of change as really relative to an end. The resultant state which we call the end of the process, as being the final stage which completes this special process, and enables us to mark off all that succeeds it as belonging to a fresh process of development, must also be its end in the sense of being the conscious attainment of an interest or purpose underlying the whole process. It is only in so far as any state of things is, for some sentient being, the realisation of a subjective interest previously manifested in an earlier stage of experience, that that state of things forms the real culmination of a process which is distinguished from all other processes, and stamped with an individuality of its own, by the fact that it does culminate in precisely this result. The conceptions of end or result and of subjective interest are logically inseparable. Hence we seem forced to infer that, since evolution is an unmeaning word, unless there are genuine, and not merely arbitrarily assigned, ends underlying the processes of physical nature, the concept of evolution as characteristic of the physical order involves the metaphysical interpretation of that order as consisting of the teleological acts of sentient beings, which we had previously accepted on more general grounds. It would be useless to attempt an escape from this conclusion by drawing a distinction between two meanings of “end”—“a last state” and “the achievement of a purpose.” For the whole point of the preceding argument was that nothing can be an “end” in the former sense without also being an end in the latter. Unless processes have ends which are their subjective fulfilment, it is only by an arbitrary convention of our own that we assign to them ends which are their last states. And if it is only an arbitrary convention that physical processes have ends in this sense, evolution itself is just such a convention and nothing more.

§ 4. What is in principle the same argument may be put in another form, and the equivalence of the two forms is itself very suggestive from the metaphysical point of view. Evolution or development, like all change, implies the presence throughout successive stages in a process of something which is permanent and unchanging. But it implies something more definite still. Whatever develops must therefore have a permanent individual character of its own of which the successive stages in the development process are the gradual unfolding. Unless the earlier and the later stages in a connected series of changes belong alike to the gradual unfolding, under the influence of surroundings, of a single individual nature, there is no meaning in speaking of them as belonging to a process of development. Only the individual can develop, if we are to attribute precise meaning to our words. We speak of the evolution of a society or a species, but if our words are not to be empty we must mean by such phrases one of two things. Either we must mean that the species and the society which develop are themselves individuals of a higher order, no less real than the members which compose them, or our language must be merely a way of saying that the life of each member of the social or biological group exhibits development.

When we reflect on what is really involved in our ordinary loose expressions about the “inheritance” of this or the other physical or social trait, we shall see that the former alternative is far less removed from ordinary ways of thought than might at first seem to be the case. If any kind of reality corresponds to our current metaphor of the “inheritance” of qualities, the groups within which such “inheritance” takes place must be something much more than mere aggregates of mutually exclusive individuals. A group within which qualities can be thus inherited must, as a whole, possess a marked individual nature of its own. Now we have already seen that all individuality is in the end teleological. A group of processes forms an individual life in the degree to which it is the expression of a unique and coherent interest or aim, and no further. Hence, once more, only what is truly individual can develop or evolve. And we readily see that it is precisely in so far as a set of processes form the expression of individual interest, that the demarcation of the group as a connected whole from all previous and subsequent processes possesses more than a conventional significance. Hence only processes which are the expression of individual interest possess “ends” or “last states,” and thus the two forms of our argument are in principle identical. Once more, then, the significance of evolutionary ideas, if they are to be more than a purely conventional scheme devised for the furtherance of our own practical purposes, and as an artificial aid to classification, is bound up with the doctrine that the events of the physical order are really the expression of the subjective interests of sentient subjects of experience.

§ 5. To proceed to a further point of the utmost importance. Not only does evolution imply the presence of individuality in the subject of the evolutionary process; it implies its possession of finite individuality. An infinite individual cannot have development or evolution ascribed to it without contradiction. Hence the Absolute, the Universe, or whatever other name we prefer to give to the infinite individual whole of existence, cannot develop, cannot progress, cannot degenerate. This conclusion might be derived at once from reflecting upon the single consideration that temporal succession is involved in all evolution, whether progressive or retrogressive. For temporal succession is, as we have seen, an inseparable consequence of finite individuality. But it will be as well to reach our result in a different way, by considering certain further implications of the concept of evolution which are manifestly only present in the case of finite individuality.

In every process of development or evolution there are involved a pair of interrelated factors, the individual nature which develops, and the environment which contains the conditions under which and the stimuli in response to which it develops. The undeveloped germ is as yet a mere possibility, something which will yet exhibit qualities not as yet possessed by it. In its undeveloped state, what it possesses is not the qualities characteristic of its later stages, but only “tendencies” or “dispositions” to manifest those qualities, provided that the environment provides the suitable stimulus. Hence, if either of the two interrelated factors of development, the individual or the environment, is missing, there can be no evolution. Now, the infinite individual whole of existence has no environment outside itself to supply conditions of development and incentives to change. Or, what is the same thing, since the “possible” means simply that which will follow if certain conditions are realised, there is no region of unrealised possibility outside the realised existence of the infinite whole. Hence in the infinite whole there can be no development: it cannot progressively adapt itself to new conditions of existence; it must once and for all be in its reality all that it is in “idea.” The infinite whole therefore evolves neither forward nor backward.

This impossibility of ascribing development to the whole of Reality is strikingly illustrated by a consideration of the impasse into which we are led when we try in practice to think of the whole universe as in process of evolution. So long as you are still in the presence of the fundamental distinction between the developing subject and its environment, you are logically driven, if everything is to be taken as a product of evolution, to supplement every evolutionary theory by a fresh evolutionary problem. To account for this special evolution (e.g., the evolution of the vertebrata) you have to assume an environment with determinate qualities of its own, influencing the evolution in question in a determinate way in consequence of these qualities. But if everything has been evolved, you have again to ask by what process of evolution this special environment came to be what it is. To solve this problem you have once more to postulate a second “environment” determining, by interaction, the course of the evolution of the former. And thus you are thrown back upon the indefinite regress.

Unless, indeed, you are prepared boldly to assert that, as all determinate character is the product of evolution, the universe as a whole must have evolved out of nothing. (You would not escape this dilemma by an appeal to the very ancient notion of a “cycle” or “periodic rhythm” of evolution, in virtue of which the product of a process of evolution serves in its turn as the environment for the reiterated evolution of its own antecedent conditions, A thus passing by evolution into B and B back again into A. For you would at least have to accept this tendency to periodic rhythm itself as an ultimate property of all existence, not itself resulting by evolution from something else.) The dilemma thus created by the attempt to apply the concept of evolution to the whole of Reality, is sufficient to show that evolution itself is only thinkable as a characteristic of processes which fall within the nature of a system which, as a whole, does not evolve.

We may restate the same contention in the following form:—All development means advance towards an end. But only that which is as yet in imperfect possession of its end can advance towards it. For that which already is all that it has it in its nature to be there can be no advance, and hence no progressive development. Neither can such a complete individual degenerate. For even in degenerating, that which degenerates is gradually realising some feature of its own nature which was previously only an unrealised potentiality. Thus even degeneration implies the realisation of an end or interest, and is itself a kind of advance[.] As the biologists tell us, the atrophy of an organ, which we call degeneration, is itself a step in the progressive adaptation of the organisation to new conditions of life, and, as the moralists remind us, in the ethical sphere a “fall” is, in its way, an upward step. Hence what cannot rise higher in the scale of existence also cannot sink lower.

§ 6. Evolution is thus an inseparable characteristic of the life of finite individuals, and of finite individuals only. And this consideration gives us the clue to the metaphysical interpretation of the distinction, so significant for all evolutionary theory, between the progressive and retrogressive directions of the evolution process. To a large extent it is, of course, a matter of convention what we shall regard as progress and what as degeneration. So long as we are specially interested in the attainment of any end or culminating result, we call the line of development which leads up to that result progressive, and the line which leads to its subsequent destruction degeneration. And thus the same development may be viewed as progress or as degeneration, according to the special character of the interests with which we study it. Thus, for instance, the successive modifications of the vertebrate structure which have resulted in the production of the human skeleton are naturally thought of as progressive, because our special interest in human intelligent life and character leads us to regard the human type as superior to its predecessors in the line of development. At the same time, many of these modifications consist in the gradual loss of characteristics previously evolved, and are therefore degenerative from the point of view of the anatomical student, who is specially interested in the production of organs of increasing complexity of structure, and therefore takes the complexity of those structures as his standard in distinguishing progress from retrogression.

But the distinction is not a purely conventional one. As we have seen, degrees of individuality are also degrees of reality; what is more completely individual is also a completer representative of the ultimate structure of the infinite individual whole, and therefore more completely real. Hence we may say that advance in individuality is really, and not in a merely conventional sense, progress in development; loss of individuality is real degeneration. Thus we get at least the possibility of a true “objective” basis for distinction between the directions of evolutionary progress. But we must remember that it is only where we are able to know something of the actual interests of finite experiencing beings that we have safe grounds for judging whether those interests receive more adequate embodiment in consequence of the changes of structure and habit produced by evolution or not. Hence, while our insight into the inner lives of ourselves and our animal congeners theoretically warrants us in pronouncing the various developments in human social life to be genuinely progressive or retrogressive, and again in regarding the series of organic types which leads directly up to man as a true “ascent,” our ignorance of the special character of the individual experiences of which the inorganic physical order at large is the phenomenal manifestation, makes it impossible for us to determine whether an “evolution” outside these limits is really progressive or not. We have to treat “cosmic evolution” in general, outside the special line of animal development which leads up to man, as indifferently a “progress” or a “degeneration” according to our own arbitrary point of view, not because it is not “objectively” definitely the one or the other, but because our insight is not sufficient to discern which it is.

§ 7. One more point may be noted, which is of some importance in view of certain metaphysical problems connected with the nature of finite individuality. If evolution is more than an illusion, it seems necessary to hold that it is a process in the course of which finite individuals may disappear and new finite individuals originate. This point is metaphysically significant, because it means that the fact of evolution is irreconcilable with any of the philosophical theories of ancient and modern times, which regard Reality as composed of a plurality of ultimately independent finite individuals or “personalities.” If these philosophical theories are sound, the course of the world’s history must be made up of the successive transformations of finite individuals, who somehow remain unaffected and unaltered in their character by the various external disguises they assume. The individuals of such a philosophy would, in fact, be as little modified by these changes as the actors on a stage by their changes of costume, or the souls of the “transmigration” hypothesis by the bodies into which they successively enter. And thus development would not be even a relatively genuine feature of the life of finite individuals; it would be a mere illusion, inevitable indeed in the present condition of our acquaintance with the detailed contents of existence, but corresponding to no actual fact of inner experience.

On the other hand, if evolution is not a pure illusion, these metaphysical constructions cannot be valid. For the whole essence of the modern doctrine of evolution is contained in the principle that radical differences in kind result from the accumulation of successive modifications of individual structure, and once established continue to be perpetuated as differences in kind. Now, such differences in kind can only be interpreted metaphysically as radical differences in the determining aims and interests of the experiencing subjects constituting the physical order, and we have already seen that it is precisely the character of these dominant unique interests which forms the individuality of the individual. Thus the metaphysical interpretation of the evolution process seems inevitably to resolve it into a process of the development of fresh and disappearance of old individual interests, and thus into a process of the origination and disappearance of finite individuals within the one infinite individual whole.

A conclusion of the same sort would be suggested by consideration of those facts of our own individual development from which the wider evolutionary theories have, in the last resort, borrowed their ideas and their terminology. The mental growth of the individual human being is essentially a process of the formation of interests in things. Both our formal education, and our informal intellectual and moral training effected by the influence of social tradition and mutual intercourse, are processes consisting of an accumulation of minor modifications which ultimately culminate in the establishment of more or less unique personal interests in different aspects of existence. And inasmuch as this process is never terminated, it is always possible for our previously acquired interests to undergo such modification as renders them obsolete, and substitutes novel interests in their places. So far as this is effected, we rightly say that we are no longer our “old selves.” A new “self” or centre of unique individual interests has then developed within the former self.

Usually the process stops short of the point at which all sensible continuity seems suspended, but that this point can be actually reached, under exceptional conditions, is shown to superfluity by such facts as those of “conversion,” to say nothing of the more pathological phenomena of “multiple personality.” The same phenomena illustrate the fact that a new individuality, once evolved, may stand in various relations to the old individual interests it displaces. It may permanently replace them, or, as in so many cases of “conversion,” may prove only temporary and pass back again into the old individuality, or the two may alternate periodically. The one important point in which all these cases agree is simply the general one of the production in the course of development of a new individuality within the first individuality. It may perhaps be suggested that we have in these features of individual growth a hint as to the true nature of the process we call the origination of new species by evolution.

To recapitulate: evolution implies change determined by reference to an end, and thus constituted into an individual process. Such “ends” have no meaning, except in so far as the processes of change are viewed as the progressive attainment of individual interests, and thus evolution is only possible where there is finite individuality. This is the philosophical justification for our previous assertion that evidence of structural evolution, where it can be had, affords reasonable presumption that what appears to us one thing is really a true individual of some degree, and not a mere arbitrary grouping together on our part of states which possess no inner unity. Further, evolution is a process in which new individuals arise and old ones disappear. Hence its significance for Metaphysics as excluding all theories which make Reality consist of a mere plurality of unchanging finite individuals. It is significant also from another point of view. Implying, as it so manifestly does, the presence of individual subjects of experience throughout the physical order, the concept of Nature as a realm of evolutionary processes is infinitely nearer to the full truth for Metaphysics than the purely mechanistic view of it as a mere succession of connected changes.

Consult further:—F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps. 27, 28 (pp. 497, 499, 508 of ed. i. for criticism of concept of Progress); H. Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. ii. chap. 8 (“Forms of the Course of Nature,” Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 109, 162); J. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lect. 5; H. Sidgwick, Philosophy: its Scope and Relations, lects. 6 and 7 (for some general consideration of the bearing of evolution on Metaphysics); G. E. Underhill, “The Limits of Evolution” (in Personal Idealism); J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. i. lects. 7-9 (criticism of Spencer’s evolutionary philosophy), 10 (on biological evolution).

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Footnote 156:

It might be objected that, e.g., death is the end of life in the sense of being its last stage, without being the attainment of the interests which compose our inner life. But the illustration will not bear examination. The processes of change within the organism, when viewed simply as connected changes, do not cease with death; in fact, they have no end or last state. To call a man’s death his end only means that the purposes for which we are interested in the study of his behaviour get complete fulfilment when we have followed him from the cradle to the grave. He is “done with” at death, because we have done with him. Only teleological processes can have a last stage. Note as a consequence of the significance of the concept of “ends” for evolution, that whereas the purely mechanistic interpretation of the processes of Nature logically leads to the thought of them as a continuous series, the series of successive organic or social types is essentially discontinuous, a point well brought out by Professor Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lects. 5, 7.

Footnote 157:

I need hardly remind the reader of the vast difference between the view inculcated above and the doctrine of “ends in nature” as it figures in the old-fashioned “argument from design.” The old-fashioned teleology assumed (1) that the “subjective interests” manifested in the evolutionary process are fundamentally human. We, it held, can recognise what these ends are, and further, they are for the most part summed up in the “design” of furthering our human convenience. (2) That these interests exist as the reflective designs of an anthropomorphic Ruler of Nature. Our doctrine is consistent with neither assumption. It follows from our whole interpretation of the physical order, that we do not and cannot know what kind of subjective interest of finite individuals is realised by any portion of it beyond that constituted by our own bodies and those of our near congeners, and therefore are absolutely without any right to fancy ourselves the culminating end of all evolution. Again, a subjective interest need not exist in the form of a definitely preconceived design; most of our own interests exist as unreflective cravings and impulses. Whether any part of the evolutionary process is due to deliberate reflective design on the part of superhuman intelligences, Metaphysics, I take it, has no means of deciding. This would be a question for solution by the same empirical methods which we employ in detecting the presence of design in the products of human art. In any case, reflective design is bound up with the time-process, and cannot therefore be ascribed to the infinite individual.

Footnote 158:

Compare, e.g., the first of the arguments for immortality in Plato’s Phædo, p. 70 ff., and the remark in the Republic, with obvious reference to this argument, that the “number of souls is always the same” (611A). In Plato the doctrine is pretty certainly of Orphic provenance. Compare also the cyclic alternation of death and life in Heracleitus, the (Orphic) cycle of births of Empedocles, that of the Stoics, and in the modern world, to take only one instance, the “eternal recurrence” of Nietzsche.

Footnote 159:

The same phenomenon of the formation of a new individuality within the limits of an already existing one, is illustrated by the familiar facts of the moral conflict between the “higher” and “lower” self.

Footnote 160:

Compare Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, p. 305 ff., where a view of this kind is worked out in some detail. Prof. Royce’s second volume unfortunately came into my hands too late to enable me to make all the use of it I could have wished; the same is the case with Mr. Underhill’s essay on “The Limits of Evolution” in Personal Idealism.

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