Very curious, in relation to modern evolutional ideas, is the Stoical doctrine that our world is but one of a series of exactly 1 Zeller says that through this distinction Aristotle first made possible the idea of development.
Thus in the end of the 17th century the seed was sown which has at intervals brought forth recurrent crops of evolutional hypotheses, based, more or less completely, on general reasonings.
A new and most important feature in organic development makes its appearance when we set out the facts of man's evolutional history.
The history of utilitarianism (if we may use the term for the earlier history of a philosophic tendency which appeared long before the invention of the term) falls into three divisions, which may be termed theological, political and evolutional respectively.
Even before the appearance of Sidgwick's book utilitarianism had entered upon its third or evolutional phase, in which principles borrowed from biological science make their entrance into moral philosophy.
