OF THE EVOLUTION-PHILOSOPHY. BY DR. M. E. CAZELLES. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY THE REV. O. B. FROTHINGHAM. WITH AN APPENDIX, RY E. L. YOUMANS, M. D. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 1875. Phil 365.10 B Harvard College Library Aug. 20, 19'9. From the lib: a of ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. INTRODUCTION. IN France, nowadays, few works of dogmatic philosophy are produced. The writers who belong to the school of Auguste Comte endeavor, by means of useful monography, to spread positive knowledge. By the analytical character of their studies, and by the efforts they make to avoid the construction of systems on metaphysical ground, they do homage to their master's ideas. The school of materialism which still holds to the dogmatic method of metaphysics, bears too plainly the stamp of its origin to possess a developed doctrine. Its adherents, graduates mostly from the laboratories of the chemist and the physiologist, are indifferent to departments of knowledge that are inaccessible through these two sciences. When they speak of thought and of society, they simply carry over to the facts indicated by these two terms an induction drawn from their own special studies. The authors and professors who are concerned with the teaching of official doctrines mainly devote themselves to the defence of certain authorized credences, and to the |