On the other hand, it is dangerous to insist too forcibly on the rationality of the history of philosophy. For it may be taken to mean--probably only by blinded or wooden commentators--that each step in the evolution and concatenation of the logical idea is to be identified with some historical system, and that these systems must have appeared in this precise order. And this would be to expect too much from the 'impotence of nature' which plays its part in the historical world also: as that on one side forms part of the Natural. There is Reason in the world--and in the world of history; but not in the pellucid brightness and distinct outlines proper to the Idea in the abstract element of thought. It may take several philosophers to make one step in thought; and sometimes one philosopher of genius may take several steps at once. There may even be co-eval philosophies: and there may be philosophies which appear to run on in independent or parallel lines of development. It may well be that Hegel has underestimated these divergencies, and that he has been too apt to see in all history the co-operation to one dominant purpose. But these errors in the execution of a philosophy of history, and especially of the history of philosophy, should not diminish our estimate of its principle.[10] At first this process was seen in the medium of time. But the conditions of time are of practical and particular interest only. The day when the first leaves appear, and the season when the fruit ripens on a tree, are questions of importance to practical arboriculture. But botany deals only with the general theory of the plant's development, in which such considerations have to be generalised. So logic leaves out of account those points of time and chance which the interests of individuals and nations find all-important. And when this element of time has been removed, there is left a system of the types of thought pure and entire,--embalming the life of generations in mere words. The same self-identical thought is set forth from its initial narrowness and poverty on to its final amplitude and wealth of differences. At each stage it is the Absolute: outside of it there is nothing. It is the whole, pure and entire: always the whole. But in its first totality it is all but a void: in its last a fully-formed and articulated world,--because it holds all that it ever threw out of itself resumed into its grasp.