I rate Hegel very highly, but essentially Darwin is the more important thinker. The point is that Hegel's dissolution of metaphysics remains an intuition. It is to Darwin's advantage that he was not operating in the rarefied atmosphere of philosophy, but real relations between living organisms.
Furthermore, Darwin influenced Marx, but Marx did not influence Darwin. Indeed it appears that Darwin never read the copy of Capital that was sent him, whereas the supplicant Marx was a great fan of Darwin's. Maybe that was Darwin's loss, but it demonstrates that Darwin dispensed with metaphysical concepts of nature all on his own.
-- Jim heartfield