Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/519

 518 S. ALEXANDEB : could be shown to have descended from one original stock by gradual descent. On the other hand, between the doctrine of evolution and Hegel's theory, how great the likeness seems to be ! When Hegel speaks of nature as a process in which, with ever increasing specification of external characters, there is an ever completer involution or reflexion of these parts to a centre, we seem to anticipate the law of progress from indefinite incoherent homogeneity to definite coherent hetero- geneity. Hegel's philosophy is in fact an evolution, called by the name of dialectic, which is the counterpart in philo- sophy of what evolution is in science. That theory he knew in the form which was given it by Treviranus and Lamarck, and he speaks of it slightingly. " This is called explaining and comprehending nature," he says, and he contrasts it unfavourably with the ancient doctrine of emanation, which had the merit of interpreting the less perfect forms of nature by the higher out of which they arose (pp. 34-5). We have already seen how different the two theories really are. Evolution is a history of how things in nature come to pass ; dialectic is the process by which one idea logically leads on to the higher idea which is implicit in it and is its truth. Evolution is a history of a process in time ; dialectic is a history of ideas which form a process not in time. In the systematic theory of evolution it is sought to derive all existence by gradual steps from the two elements of matter and force, and though no proof has yet been given of the continuity of the process between inorganic and organic life, the theory is verified by the discovery of first principles common to mechanics, to physics, and to organic life. Hegel would have granted that similar laws do indeed hold in all departments of nature ; but he would have called such a discovery an external generalisation of reflection, and he might have added what he says of the doctrine of meta- morphosis, " It is important to maintain identity, but equally important to maintain difference " (p. 35). The forms which realise these laws perform a different function, and it is this difference of function which philosophy has to explain. Life may be shown to be a complicated mechanism, yet it has a different function from mechanism, and it is therefore dis- tinguished in idea and called by a different name. It is this difference of function which is the secret of the repugnance of the ordinary mind to accept the derivation of organic from inorganic nature. The less comprehensive system deals with life only, and it may assert, as Prof. Huxley once did, that all forms of life