"Everything that could blossom upon Earth has blossomed, each in its due season and its proper sphere; it has withered away and will blossom again when its time arrives." So says Herder of civilizations, using one of his favorite metaphors. His pre-Darwin Hegelian teleology sounds quaint at times, but at the same time allows him to hold some amazingly modern sentiments. For example, he repudiates slavery and the mistreatment of different races, and makes an appeal to understand them without filtering them through our own conceptual schemes; he realizes the genetic source of all changes and...