the known, whether, for example, new discoveries may not one day supersede
our most elementary notions about nature. To a certain extent all our
knowledge is conditional upon what may be known in future ages of the
world. We must admit this hypothetical element, which we cannot get rid of
by an assumption that we have already discovered the method to which all
philosophy must conform. Hegel is right in preferring the concrete to the
abstract, in setting actuality before possibility, in excluding from the
philosopher's vocabulary the word 'inconceivable.' But he is too well
satisfied with his own system ever to consider the effect of what is
unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are
plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire
of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at
least has all the elements of knowledge under his hand.

Hegelianism may be said to be a transcendental defence of the world as it
is. There is no room for aspiration and no need of any: 'What is actual
is rational, what is rational is actual.' But a good man will not readily
acquiesce in this aphorism. He knows of course that all things proceed
according to law whether for good or evil. But when he sees the misery and
ignorance of mankind he is convinced that without any interruption of the
uniformity of nature the condition of the world may be indefinitely
improved by human effort. There is also an adaptation of persons to times
and countries, but this is very far from being the fulfilment of their
higher natures. The man of the seventeenth century is unfitted for the
eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of
us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all
higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all
ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in
mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankind--Plato, Dante, Sir
Thomas More--meet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they