NATURE'S EVOLUTION. 17 



categories of Philosophy. This last work 

 has taken its rank as one of the supreme 

 masterpieces of human Thinking. It may be 

 regarded as the unique instance of Pure Evo- 

 lution, as it exists in the Absolute Mind "be- 

 fore the creation of Nature and finite Man' 

 (as Hegel puts it himself). So it is the evolu- 

 tionary Idea going in advance of the reality, 

 which, however, is soon to follow. In this 

 fashion Hegel the philosopher proclaims the 

 Thought of the Century in its primordial un- 

 alloyed essence. It should be added that 

 Hegel in his life embodied his philosophic 

 principle of Evolution, for he has very dis- 

 tinctly his personally evolutionary period. 

 Thus he biographically as well as philosophi- 

 cally manifests the fundamental character of 

 his Century; his life incarnates his thought. 

 (For a fuller view of this phase of Hegel, see 

 the essay upon him in our Modern European 

 Philosophy, especially the section headed The 

 Evolutionary Hegel, p. 654, etc.) 



Still, Hegel, philosopher that he was, 

 showed his inherent limitation in the matter 

 of Evolution when the latter was to incorpor- 

 ate itself in Nature. He allowed only the 

 ideal Evolution, which determined, as it were 

 from without, all the shapes of the physical 

 world. He has left us a considerable book 

 on The Philosophy of Nature, which, amid 



