THE HALO OF A HUNDRED YEARS 389 



anatomy and medicine. Still, when all is said and done, Hegel shone 

 the bright particular star of the constellation. Indeed, so far as our 

 perplexing proximity permits fair judgment, we must rank him fore- 

 most among the systematic thinkers of the nineteenth century. The 

 ceaseless praises and recriminations that have encompassed his memory 

 ever since his death, in 1831, prove no less. Present signs of his return- 

 ing influence among the Teutonic peoples indicate much the same thing. 

 But, some one will inquire, what has all this to do with Darwin's 

 hold upon the general imagination ? I answer, everything ! For while, 

 schooled by long neglect, even contumely, we philosophers have learned 

 to consume our own smoke in comparative silence, you, my scientific 

 colleagues, may be prepared to take the word of one who, perhaps more 

 than any of your coadjutors, possesses the right to speak with authority 

 on the occasion of the Darwin Centennial. Professor H. F. Osborn 

 writes : 



It is a very striking fact that the basis of our modern methods of 

 studying the evolution problem was established not by the early naturalists 

 nor by the speculative writers, but by the philosophers. They alone were 

 upon the main track of modern thought.^ 



Many proofs might be adduced readily. Two mere indications must 

 suffice here. Hegel, for instance, insists, and rightly, that the botanists 

 of his day, obsessed by classification, did not realize the force of Goethe's 

 position, " eben well ein Ganzes darin dargestellt wurde."* Again, 

 Goethe himself formulated Spencer's famous principle about the pas- 

 sage from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent 

 heterogeneity. Goethe points out: 



The more imperfect a being is the more do its individual parts resemble 

 each other, and the more do these parts resemble the whole. The more 

 perfect the being is, the more dissimilar are its parts. In the former case 

 the parts are more or less a repetition of the whole; in the latter case they 

 are totally unlike the whole. The more the parts resemble each other, the 

 less subordination is there of one to the other. Subordination of parts indi- 

 cates high grade of organization." 



But, like other incalculable human forces, the idealists bore their 

 manifest limitations. And Hegel may be taken as their consecrated 

 representative. Perhaps we may understand this matter best by saying 

 that, after a fashion, he came too soon. His central thesis embodied a 

 theory of universal development, a theory that has had no parallel for 

 boldness and penetration since Plato and his unique pupil, Aristotle. 

 Now, a huge framework of this sort needs multifarious filling in. And 

 one may well admire the temerity of the philosopher when he recalls 

 the condition of knowledge between 1813 and 1816, the years that wit- 



' " From the Greeks to Darwin," p. 87. 



* " Naturphil.," p. 489. 



'"Life of Goethe," G. H. Lewes, p. 358. 



