Darwin and Hegel; With Other Philosophical Studies (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893. Excerpt: ... DARWIN AND HEGEL: WITH OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES. I. ORIGIN AND VALIDITY.1 When Aristotle, after tracing the progress of human society from the patriarchal family to the city-state of the Hellenes, says that the city-state comes into being for the sake of life, but has its being for the sake of the good life, he gives an admirable illustration of a distinction, which he is always ready to recognise, between the origin of anything (its material cause--e aS) and its final cause rehoi), i.e., the end which it comes to serve: this latter must be known if we are to know the true nature of a thing (17 Se (pucris Te'Xoy ecrri). This distinction has not lost its significance, though it has been overlooked in many philosophical and other controversies. The question that sometimes arises in social circles which are careful of their dignity: "Who is so-and-so?" is frequently solved by consultation of the Peerage or, at a lower elevation, of some old lady: and the oracle answers by telling who his great-grandfather or great-grandmother was, the value of a man (or 1 Reprinted from Mind, Vol. XIII., No. 49 (1888). D. H. B woman) for certain purposes of society being supposed to depend not on what he himself is, but on what some ancestor had the reputation of being. Pride of birth is, indeed, sometimes supported by the scientific doctrine of heredity, though it is apt to be forgotten that the kind of eminence which has qualified men in times past for elevation to the peerage has not always been such as to make the transmission of it desirable in the interests of the whole social organism as that now is. And, further, it is forgotten that, if a man's great-great-grandfather was a really great person, the man is probably only in respect of one-sixteenth part of hi...