In other words, self-consciousness is
the key to all the problems of nature. Science, in its progress, is
gradually substituting one category for the other, and every one of
these categories is at once a law of thought and a law of things as
known. Each category, successively adopted, lifts nature more to the
level of man; and the last category of modern thought, namely,
development, constrains us so to modify our views of nature, as to
regard it as finally explicable only in the terms of spirit. Thus, the
movement of science is towards idealism. Instead of lowering man, it
elevates nature into a potency of that which is highest and best in man.
It represents the life of man, in the language of philosophy, as the
return of the highest to itself; or in the language of our poet, and of
religion, as a manifestation of infinite love. The explanation of nature
from the principle of love, if it errs, errs "because it is not
anthropomorphic enough," not because it is too anthropomorphic; it is
not too high and concrete a principle, but too low and abstract.

It now remains to show that the poet, in employing the idea of
evolution, was aware of its upward direction. I have already quoted a
few passages which indicate that he had detected the false use of it. I
shall now quote a few others in which he shows a consciousness of its
true meaning:

"'Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact
Made plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks.
'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump
Once on a time; he kept an after course
Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,
Till he attained to be an ape at last,
Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock
In aught the natural pride.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]

"Not at all," the poet interrupts the man of science: "Friend, banish
fear!"

"I like the thought He should have lodged me once
I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,
The mansion and the palace; made me learn
The feel o' the first, before I found myself
Loftier i' the last."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

This way upward from the lowest stage through every other to the
highest, that is, the way of development, so far from lowering us to the
brute level, is the only way for us to attain to the true highest,
namely, the all-complete.

"But grant me time, give me the management
And manufacture of a model me,
Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw,--
Why