Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/518

HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OF NATURE. 517 into characters which " give the appearance of independent individuals " ; but what reason is there that these individuals, should vary from the common type ? Hegel would answer that the confusion is of the essence of nature, and that philosophy has done its work when it has explained the existence of variety in general, and it is not called upon to deduce any individual thing, like the " pen of Herr Krug ". And doubtless this answer would be sufficient if only from self-externality confusion could be inferred, but it is this which is in question. Hegel admits that every now and then nature in her wildest freaks surprises us with a glimpse of the Notion, but is not this intermingling of notional and accidental a fact to be explained ? The economists of the older Eicardian school, who held that the laws of their science were abstract laws, were ready enough to modify them when a body of actual, complicated facts presented itself which allowed of scientific treatment. May it not be that the inability of philosophy to understand the great body of facts familiar to us as variety, modification, multiplicity, accident, is not due to the weakness of nature, but suggests a problem for philosophy itself ? VI. Modern Theories. Perhaps it will help to enlighten Hegel's conception of nature if we consider it very briefly in its- bearing upon some modern theories, which we may discuss in the spirit of Hegel when we cannot be guided by his actual words. Two views have been mentioned in the preceding pages, the doctrine of evolution and the various theories which endow the atoms and molecules with souls or mind. (1) Evolution. The belief in special acts of creation which evolution has driven from the field would not have delayed Hegel long. Such a belief implies the merely mechanical conception of a God existing outside a world which also exists as an eternal uncreate. But nature is not external to the idea, but involved in it. If then it is taken as a whole, it is not created by a definite act before which it did not exist, for it shares the eternity of the idea and is timeless. Kegarded as the process in time by which nature maintains its character, it is for ever created, or is a perpetual creation. 1 If it is taken in its parts, these certainly do begin to appear, but they are no more special creations for that than if they 1 Cp. Eiuleitung, pp. 25-26.