xyS THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



vain, however much genius he put into his work. But even as a purely specu- 

 lative thought-system it suffers from serious defects — inconsistency, daring 

 conclusion, and lack of cohesion. All this, however, Schelling took quite 

 lightly; he was indeed a genius and an artist, and these factors work, accord- 

 ing to his theory, half unconsciously and without being worried by the 

 pedantry of the man in the street. It was these very faults, however, that soon 

 proved his undoing; it was just in the purely theoretical sphere that his 

 philosophy was out-distanced by another system, the Hegelian, which was 

 equally abstract and unreal, but far more consistently thought out, and be- 

 sides, from the scientific point of view, it had the undeniable advantage of 

 not involving nature in its speculations. 



Georg WiLHELM Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a fellow-country- 

 man and school-friend of Schelling's and, though older, was at first under the 

 influence of his precocious friend. However, he eventually worked out for 

 himself a theory of his own and in his first independent work published a 

 severe criticism of Schelling's theory of the absolute, which is described as 

 the "simplicity of the emptiness of knowledge; a night in which all the cows 

 are black." Hegel eventually became professor in Berlin and founded a well- 

 attended school, which he subjected to strong discipline. What impressed 

 his pupils, and indeed his entire age, was, besides his commanding person- 

 ality, the splendid consistency that he developed in his system of thought. 

 His dialectical method, however, according to which every idea has its 

 opposite, both of which are afterwards brought together and combined into 

 one larger idea, has no concern with our subject, especially as Hegel and his 

 disciples expressed the deepest contempt for nature and its study — which 

 gradually resulted in natural scientists' turning the tables by generally re- 

 garding all that is meant by philosophy as empty prattle about empty 

 fancies. On the other hand, Hegel performed a great service to the study of 

 history in insisting upon the necessity of ascertaining not only the events 

 that took place, but also the spiritual movements that brought them about. 

 A similar position to that of Hegel in Germany was held in Upsala by Kris- 

 TOFER Jakob Bostrom (1797-1866), who for half a century governed that 

 university and made of Linnasus's ancient seat of learning a centre of abstract 

 speculation. 



But though Schelling was thus worsted in the theoretical sphere, his 

 natural philosophy survived as a general theory of life with the support of a 

 whole generation of contemporary scientists. The cause of this strange phe- 

 nomenon must partly be sought in the fact that there was no other equally 

 comprehensive explanation of nature available, and some such explanation 

 was an absolute essential of existence at that time. But there were many con- 

 tributing causes thereto, including the fact that Schelling's natural philoso- 

 phy was embraced by a man who was regarded by his age as an authority in 



