f the evolution which carries him
along with it--a spirit which understands and loves these ties and these
laws, and which, submitting to them with delight, thereby becomes free
and creative.[69] Man--the term applies to Nicolai himself in the sense
of the character in Terence's play who said, "Homo sum; humani nihil a
me alienum puto." Herein lies the great merit of his work; and herein,
too, we find its defect. In his eagerness to include everything, he has
attempted the impossible. He speaks in one place with an unjust
contempt, and with a contempt which he above all should have been slow
to express, of the "Vielwisser," the polyhistor.[70] But he himself is a
Vielwisser, one of the finest specimens of this genus, too rare in our
day. In all domains, art, science, history, religion, and politics, his
insight is penetrating, but at the same time rapid and incisive.
Everywhere his opinions are lively, often original, and often debatable.
The wealth of his glimpses "de omni re scibili," the abundance of his
intuitions and his reasonings, have a brilliant and at times a
venturesome character. The historical chapters are not above reproach.
Unquestionably the lack of books accounts for certain insufficiencies,
but I think the peculiarities of the author's own genius are partly
responsible. He is headlong and impulsive. These qualities give charm to
his writing, but they are dangerous. What he loves, he sees beautifully.
But woe to what he does not love! Take, for instance, his disdainful and
hasty judgments upon the recent imaginative writers of
Germany--judgments passed wholesale.[71]

It is a remarkable fact that this German biologist resembles no one
living or dead so much as he resembles one of our French encyclopedists
of the eighteenth century. I know no one in contemporary France who
can, to the same degree, be compared with him. Diderot and Dalembert
would have opened their arms to this man of science, who humanises
science, who boldly limns a picture instinct with life, a brilliant
synthesis of the human mind, of its evolution, of its manifold
activities, and of the results it has achieved; who throws wide the
doors of his laboratory to intelligent men of the world; and who
deliberately wishes to make of science an instrument of struggle and
emancipation in the war of the nations on behalf of liberty. Like
Dalembert and Diderot, he is "in the thick of the fight." He marches in
the vanguard of modern thought, but