superior and organically related to the earlier. No sufficient criterion
is provided by them for evaluating the various stages in the course of
an evolutionary process. The biologist's world would probably have been
just as rational if the famous ape-like progenitor of man had chanced to
become his offspring-assuming an original environment favorable for such
transformation. Some criterion besides the mere external and accidental
"struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" must be furnished
to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the
fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive _are_ the
fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? But that survival
itself is valuable: that it is better to be alive than dead; that
existence has a value other than itself; that what comes later in the
history of the race or of the universe is an advance over what went
before-that, in a word, the world is subject to an immanent development,
only a comprehensive and systematic philosophy can attempt to show.

The task of Hegel's whole philosophy consists in showing, by means of
one uniform principle, that the world manifests everywhere a genuine
evolution. Unlike the participants in the biological "struggle for
existence," the struggling beings of Hegel's universe never end in
slaying, but in reconciliation. Their very struggle gives birth to a new
being which includes them, and this being is "higher" in the scale of
existence, because it represents the preservation of two mutually
opposed beings. Only where conflicts are adjusted, oppositions overcome,
negations removed, is there advance, in Hegel's sense; and only where
there is a passage from the positive through its challenging negative to
a higher form inclusive of both is there a case of real development.

The ordinary process of learning by experience illustrates somewhat
Hegel's meaning. An individual finds himself, for instance, in the