All right, you nerds.
I can read about Hegel's philosophy of history and more or less understand it as the working out of reason towards the ultimate end of human freedom. But then when I try to apply that, apparently I don't actually understand it.
In Mitchell's 1881 short story (it's short) "The Clock That Went Backwards," the professor who turns out to be a time traveler is repeatedly described as Hegelian. (N.b. the actual phrases "time travel" and "time machine" are both coined and popularized by H.G. Wells a decade or so later; Mitchell's story was kind of ignored at the time).
On one hand, Hegelian here probably refers to the philosophy he teaches, but on the other, I have the impression it means something within the story. And I don't know what.
Help.
Reading the short story, which was quite interesting and one that I haven't heard of, I think you are on to something with the focus on Hegel.
I'm not an expert on Hegel (and the Germans tend to make my head swim, I don't understand Heidegger or Husserl either...) but I think the entirety of the story is an engagement with Hegel's concept of causation. Hegel's causation seems to be bounded by perspective, that one thing causes another only because we perceive it that way. This involves an engagement with the concept of the necessary. We see causation running in one direction because it is necessary for us, as subjects. However, this necessity need not be objectively true, merely subjectively true.
This seems to be the underlying question of the short story, could this not be true? I think this is also born out by the professor's final comments
"If cause produces effect, does effect never induce cause? Does the law of heredity, unlike all other laws of this universe of mind and matter, operate in one direction only? Does the descendant owe everything to the ancestor, and the ancestor nothing to the descendant? Does destiny, which may seize upon our existence, and for its own purposes bear us far into the future, never carry us back into the past?"
This is the question of Hegel's causation. Also, the professor basically quotes Hegel when he says "You do not grasp the return of the Itself into Itself through its Otherself?"
I did find an interesting discussion on Hegel's causation that might be worth reading if you are looking to understand this subject a bit more, (it also involves a discussion of Dewey) Dewey, Hegel, and Causation
Charles Taylor also has a respected book on Hegel, but I have not read it.