418 THE BIOCOSMOS HISTORICAL. 



the ills of society, and which developed Karl 

 Marx with his later socialism, whose edifice 

 he sought to erect in a monumental book (Das 

 Kapital). Darwin's Natural Selection should 

 be regarded, therefore, as the outgrowth of the 

 time and nation in their most coercive prob- 

 lem, and not simply as an isolated burst of 

 individual genius. Shortly before the publi- 

 cation of his great book he witnessed the excit- 

 ing repeal of the long-standing corn-laws, 

 which act threw down the last bar to the un- 

 restrained might of Natural Selection among 

 the British people. 



Here we may recall that the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, which was spiritually defined and for- 

 mulated by Darwin more than by any other 

 man must be deemed the evolutionary cen- 

 tury. We have elsewhere noted that Hegel, 

 the chief philosopher of the century, applies 

 Evolution to his Absolute Idea, and thus his 

 entire system of thought is evolutionary, 

 though kept wholly in the realm of abstract 

 thought. That was too remote for the average 

 mind, which must see the principle working in 

 the realm of sense, which proof was just that 

 furnished by Darwin. Accordingly the biolo- 

 gist and not the philosopher took possession 

 of his age and voiced its inmost spirit in a 

 way intelligible to all, elevating at the same 

 time Natural Science into the utterance of the 



