18 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



and the specific, may be studied on the basis of each one of 

 the principal characteristics of living bodies, not only on 

 that of their forms. Therefore, systematics is to be the 

 second appendix to the chief part of our studies in morpho- 

 logy, and systematics, in its turn, will later on lead us to a 

 short sketch of the historical side of biology, to the theory 

 of evolution in its different forms, and to the logic of history 

 in general. 



So far will our programme be carried out during this 

 summer. Next year the theory of movements will con- 

 clude our merely scientific analysis, and the remaining 

 part of the course next summer will be devoted to the 

 philosophy of living nature. I hope that nobody will be 

 able to accuse our philosophy of resting 011 unsound founda- 

 tions. But those of you, on the other hand, who would be 

 apt to regard our scientific chapters as a little too long 

 compared with their philosophical results, may be asked to 

 consider that a small clock-tower of a village church is 

 generally less pretentious but more durable than the 

 campanile of San Marco has been. 



Indeed, these lectures will afford more " facts ' to my 

 hearers, than Gifford Lectures probably have done, as a rule. 

 But how could that be otherwise on the part of a naturalist ? 

 Scientific facts are the material that the philosophy of 

 nature has to work with, but these facts, unfortunately, are 

 not as commonly known as historical facts, for instance, 

 generally are ; and they must be known, in order that a 

 philosophy of the organism may be of any value at all, that 

 it may be more than a mere entertainment. 



Goethe once said, that even in so-called facts there is 

 more " theory " than is usually granted ; he apparently was 



