THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSICS 253 



physician in exclusive and solitary possession of the world of con- 

 sciousness. It is the same world for all. The metaphysician cannot 

 shift the physical world, with its oceans and icebergs, its vast plane- 

 tary systems and milky ways, on to the shoulders of the physicist. 

 This is the metaphysician's own recalcitrant world, which will doubt- 

 less task all his resources to explain. In the second place, though it 

 is the same world that is clamoring for interpretation, it is a world 

 that passes through successive transformations, in order to adapt itself 

 to progressive modes of interpretation. The plain man is called to pass 

 through a species of Copernican revolution that subordinates the phe- 

 nomenon to its ground, before he can become a man of science. In 

 turn, the man of science must go through the Copernican process, and 

 learn to subordinate his atoms and ethers to consciousness before he 

 can become a metaphysician. And it is this transformation that marks 

 one of the most fundamental steps in the method of metaphysics. 

 The world must experience this transformation, and it must become 

 habitual to the thinker to subordinate the physical to the mental 

 before the metaphysical point of view can be other than foreign to 

 him. If, then, it be the same content with which the sciences and 

 metaphysics are called on to deal, it is clear that we have on our 

 hands another problem on the answer to which the fate of meta- 

 physics vitally depends; the question of the correlation of its method 

 with that of the sciences so that it may stand vindicated as the final 

 interpretation of things. 



Ill 



QUESTION OF THE CORRELATION OF METAPHYSICS WITH THE SCIENCES 



We have reached two conclusions that are vital here: (1) that the 

 metaphysical way of looking at the world involves a transformation 

 of the world of physical science; (2) that it is the same world that lies 

 open to both science and metaphysics. Out of this arises the pro- 

 blem of the correlation of the two views; the two interpretations of 

 the world. If science be right in conceiving the world under such 

 categories as quantity and natural causation; if science be right 

 in seeking a mechanical explanation of phenomena (that is, one that 

 excludes prevision, purpose, and aim); and if metaphysics be right 

 in refusing to accept this explanation as final and in insisting that 

 the principle of ultimate interpretation is teleological, that it falls 

 under the categories of prevision, purpose, and aim; then it is clear 

 that the problem of correlation is on our hands. In dealing with this 

 problem, it will be convenient to separate it into two questions: (1) 

 that of the fact; (2) that of its rationale. The fact of the correlation 

 is a thing of common experience. We have but to consider the way 

 in which this Congress of Science has been brought about in order to 



