What it all comes to, then, is simply things as they are; a primitive atom is nought, we have only material structure under material conditions. Indeed, the theorists in question may declare, We never intended it otherwise, of primitive atoms we never spoke. It may be said in reply, that to go back to a primitive atom was, in fact, to put their own problem into its true. place. A primordial form seems really to demand a primitive atom; and to bridge the gulf from this first atom to an oyster, were not more difficult than to bridge the gulf from an oyster to a man: agencies adequate to the latter may be readily assumed adequate to the former also. But, indeed, the search for a primordial form, to which they say they are driven by the universal analogy, is, in ultimate analysis, nothing but the search for identity without difference; quite the same problem as that of the primitive atom. The one great error of these theorists, in truth, is their onesided resolution to look only for identity: I am like the monkey; so I am to abstract from the differences, and speculate on how and when I derived thence! But, similarly, I am like the rat; slit each of us from chin to pubis, and how analogous are the organs! I am, in fact, an animal, and as such analogous to all animals-nay, I stand as summary of the entire round. of the principles of nature: but what then? Am I not also more ?-have I not an inner as well?-and on which side is the testimony, if that whole outer be but one analogy of this inner, and on principles of this inner? It is a mistake, then, to abstract from difference and signalise identity alone, just as it is a mistake to signalise difference and abstract from identity.* This Enlightenment, on the general well to have remembered these question of Man, would have done words of one of its own foremost mistake coheres with the general mistake that these theorists propose to approach the problem and manipulate the problem with all their categories readyformed it has never occurred to them to say, we determine all by difference and identity, by conditions, by cause and effect, &c.: it will, therefore, be necessary to examine first of all what these things mean, and whether what they involve be in itself true or not. Now, this it was that occurred to Hegel; and so it was that he was enabled to discern an entire internal system, of which nature was but the externalisation, and thus complete on both sides the single analogy, the concrete reciprocity. Had the theorists in question but perceived the necessity of verifying those internal standards by which they proposed to appreciate and appraise all, they would have consulted Metaphysic, and would have been surprised to find that the whole industry they contemplated had received its rationale, and, in its extreme form, its coup-de-grâce, more than fourscore years ago at the hands of Kant. Or-as we may say it otherwise they would have been surprised to find that what they contemplated was at once absolutely certain and utterly impossible. In what he calls the Anhang, or Appendix, to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant proves the existence of three laws in human nature imposed by it on the objects of sense, and received by it from and with these objects, as if they (these laws) were part sais si la nature peut présenter un object plus étrange et plus difficile à pénétrer à la raison toute seule, que ce que nous appelons un animal priests, Bayle:-'L'homme est le and parcel of these objects themselves, and not a reflexion, a colour fallen on them from the very faculties to which they (these objects) presented themselves. This peculiarity is summed up in the single word transcendental: that is transcendental which is really a contribution to objects from us, but which, at the same time, appears to us actually in the objects themselves. Further, the three laws in question enter not into objects as Constitutive of them, but only influence them, so to speak, from without, as Regulative of them into unity and system. Now, it is such laws that become transcendent when wrongly applied-when, on the supposition that they belong to the objects themselves, conclusions are attempted to be made in regard to these objects which transcend the limits of all possible experience. Here, then, we have a perfect indication of the entire nature of the Darwinian industry: a law, not in objects, but falling from us on them, has been erroneously supposed by the reasoners alluded to to be still, nevertheless, in them, and to be capable of supplying results quite impossible to any experience. In other words, these gentlemen have supposed objective what was only transcendental, attempting, moreover, to force the same into such use that it became transcendent. The three laws in question Kant speaks of thus:— Reason, therefore, prepares for Understanding its field, 1. by a principle of the Homogeneity of the Variety of individuals under higher genera; 2. through a principle of the Variety of the Homogeneity of individuals under lower species; and, in order to complete the systematic unity, it adds, 3. a law of the Affinity of all notions, which law dictates a continuous transition from every single species to every other through gradual increase of Diversity: we may name them the Principles of the Homogeneity, of the Specification, and of the Continuity of Forms.' The first law Kant further expresses by the proposition, Entia præter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda;' the second by, 'Entium varietates non temere esse minuendas;' and the third by, Non datur vacuum formarum,' or, 'Datur continuum formarum,' or, Est lex continui in natura.' Each of these laws aims only at a 'Focus Imaginarius,' for the use of our understanding, which, therefore, as a focus imaginarius, can only be asymptotically approached, nor ever reached, for it is underived from experience, and is indeed wholly beyond the limits of any possible experience. Into the proofs of Kant we have no room to enter, but it will probably be found, in the end, that they are irrefutable. Variety, Affinity, and Unity are three necessities of Reason, and they fall on Nature from Reason, but are not in Nature as such they are only the source of three maxims of Reason, which Reason only seeks to realise. When, then, the supporters of the modern argument in question would refer all to a common genus, and would account for all variety by 'transmutation of species' (accomplished by whatever expedients they may like), they are only repeating the schoolboy's chase after the rainbow; they are pursuing only what is in themselves, and will move as they move. There is no single genus in Nature, nor any infinitude of mutuallyaffined species: these are but spectra of the reasoner's own projection, illusions merely when their real quality is undetected. They have their indispensable use, they connect and give meaning to experience, but they are only snares and pitfalls when applied beyond the possibility of experience. One grand system, unity of type, all this must be postulated from the very constitution of human reason; but from the very constitution of experience as well, it can never be realised in experience. It is ours to assume that there is such articulate chain in fact: we but stultify ourselves, however, would we attempt to see this chain in growth. This, nevertheless, is just what Darwinists would see; and just so it is that Darwinianism is at once absolutely certain and utterly impossible. We would catch Nature in the fact, would we-actually come upon her with an individual half in and half out! We would see identity end, and difference begin; but so still that the one were the other! But we may support Kant by Hegel, who (Encyclo. § 249, and Remark) pronounces as follows: Nature is to be regarded as a System of Grades, of which the one necessarily rises out of the other, and is the proximate truth of the one from which it results-but not so that the one were naturally generated out of the other, but only in the inner Idea which constitutes the Ground of Nature. Metamorphosis accrues only to the Notion as such, as only its alteration is development. The Notion, however, is in Nature partly only inner, partly existent only as living individual to this individual alone, then, is existent metamorphosis confined. It has been an inept conception of earlier and later Naturphilosophie' to regard the progression and transition of one natural form and sphere into a higher as an outwardly actual production which, however, to be made clearer, is relegated into the obscurity of the past. To Nature externality is precisely proper-to let the differences fall asunder and present themselves as neutral Existences: the dialectic Notion which guides forward the stages, is the inner of the same. Thinking consideration must deny itself such nebulous, at bottom sensuous, conceptions, as is in especial the |