D.G. Ritchie's idealist evolutionism

Abstract

It is hardly necessary to sketch the background against which D.G. Ritchie wrote: few social, political, and philosophical changes can have been better documented than those of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, it has now become commonplace to review British nineteenth century thought in terms of a change from utilitarianism to idealism, or to show the process from status to contract to a new sort of status again, or to point out the impact of scientific discovery, or to show up the often religiously-motivated rejoinders of a shy agnosticism. The century's Spencers are known with all their brittle mechanism hidden in an organic shell, and so are its Huxleys with their theories of progress, necessary or otherwise. We know the inconsistent Benthams, the case histories of those who like J.S. Mill grafted new branches on old philosophies, and we know the noble Greens who sought cohesion between political practice and philosophical principle.