  Interestingly, the same criticism is advanced against philosophies such as Hegel’s that conceives of natural history as the ‘externalization’ of a primordial ‘Idea.’ Ward notices, however, that Hegel’s description of nature—as ‘a bacchantic God’ (148), and as providing ‘the spectacle of a contingency that runs out into endless detail’ (139)—is insightful and wholly in line with his own; indeed, he goes so far as to say that ‘there is a strong undercurrent of [Leibnizian] pluralism running through the whole of Hegel’s philosophy.’ (159)