Ixxxvi KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



not to speak of the Mediaeval Mystics attain to 

 much more definite ideas regarding the development 

 of the universe. Descartes' Vortices, although an 

 ingenious hypothesis, was not worked otit into the 

 detail of a system ; and Leibnitz's Monadology and 

 Pre-established Harmony, although involving a lofty 

 spiritual view of the world, cut itself away from the 

 first from all real physical connection. Newton, 

 again, was too resolutely opposed to hypotheses not 

 directly founded upon empirical facts, and too anxious 

 to keep within the limits of exact calculation, to give 

 reins to his imagination in Jthe physical sphere. But 

 Kant, gifted with a rare combination of empirical 

 observation and speculative thought, was specially 

 equipped with a genius that could grasp and combine 

 the ' two worlds ' in one. And so he first truly 

 discerned the evolutional process of Nature in its 

 universal range, and gave it corresponding scientific 

 expression. In the work with which we are now 

 dealing, he exemplifies this great idea as holding 

 in the whole sphere of inorganic or ' pre-organic ' 

 Nature, and he is thus the greatest of all the 

 pre-organic evolutionists. But even at this stage he 

 did not stop here, but indicated, at least, that the 

 idea of evolution was equally to be applied to the 

 organic world, although he well knew that ' it is more 

 difficult to explain the genesis of a worm than the 

 origin of a world.' His evolutionary theory was thus 

 co-extensive with the universe,and included all its parts 

 and all its developments. He was thus the precursor in 



