TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixxxvii 



the Eighteenth Century of Herbert Spencer and Dar-~ 

 win in the Nineteenth ; ' but he was greater than both, 

 in that he established the general principles of which 

 they have only given particular expressions, and in 

 that, through the whole evolutionary process, he found 

 an ultimate absolute principle, which at once trans- 

 cends and comprehends it all. The Natural History 

 and Theory of the Heavens is thus pregnant with the 

 idea of a universal evolution ; and, following out the 

 later stages of his thought, we find that it really con- 

 stitutes the most enduring conception of his philo- 

 sophy. But, in order to find it, we must look through 

 and beneath the elaborate formalism of his later mode 

 of thinking, till disentangling himself, so far, from 

 the fruitless abstractions of the 'mere vain dialectic 

 art ' in which the Critique of the Pure Reason 

 terminates, he grasps all the more firmly the pro- 

 found conception of Humanity, which was implicitly 

 involved in all his earlier thinking, and stands before 

 its majesty and infinity with a new sense of awe. 

 He then comes to see the whole purpose of the 

 universe in the light of the practical reason, and finds 

 the order of the primary creation in Nature, which had 

 been the first subject of his scientific investigation, 

 consummated by the creative function of man, 

 through the moral causality of his rational will. 

 According to Kant, the cosmic evolution of Nature 

 is continued in the historic development of humanity 

 and completed in the moral perfection of the individual. 

 This is the largest and the most valuable thought in 



