In the views of Wundt and Fouillée we find the fundamental idea of idealism psychical phenomena as expressions of the innermost nature of existence. They differ from the older Idealism in the great stress which they lay on evolution as a real, historical process which is going on through steady conflict with external conditions. The Romantic dread of reality is broken. It is beyond doubt that Darwin's emphasis on the struggle for life as a necessary condition of evolution has been a very important factor in carrying philosophy back to reality from the heaven of pure ideas. The philosophy of Ardigò, on the other side, appears more as a continuation and deepening of positivism, though the Italian thinker arrived at his point of view independently of French-English positivism. The idea of continuous evolution is here maintained in opposition to Comte's and Mill's philosophy of discontinuity. From Wundt and Fouillée Ardigò differs in conceiving psychical evolution not as an immediate revelation of the innermost nature of existence, but only as a single, though the most accessible example, of evolution. III. To the French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson, evolution proper is continuous and qualitative, while outer experience and physical science give us fragments only, sporadic processes and mechanical combinations. To Bergson, in his recent work _L'Evolution Créatrice_, evolution consists in an _élan de vie_ which to our fragmentary observation and analytic reflexion appears as broken into a manifold of elements and processes. The concept of matter in its scientific form is the result of this breaking asunder, essential for all scientific reflexion. In these conceptions the strongest opposition between inner and outer conditions of evolution is expressed: in the domain of internal conditions spontaneous development of qualitative forms--in the domain of external conditions discontinuity and mechanical combination.