202 PHILOSOPHY 



During the nineteenth century science has seen many important 

 additions to that Ideal of Nature and her processes, to form which 

 in a unitary and harmonizing but comprehensive way is the philo- 

 sophical goal of science. The gross mechanical conception of nature 

 which prevailed in the earlier part of the eighteenth century has long 

 since been abandoned, as quite inadequate to our experience with 

 her facts, forces, and law T s. The kinetic view, which began with 

 Huygens, Euler, and Ampere, and which was so amplified by Lord 

 Kelvin and Clerk-Maxwell in England, and by Helmholtz and others 

 in Germany, on account of its success in explaining the phenomena 

 of light, of gases, etc., very naturally led to the attempt to develop 

 a kinetic theory, a doctrine of energetics, which should explain all 

 phenomena. But the conception of "that which moves," the ex- 

 perience of important and persistent qualitative differentiae, and 

 the need of assuming ends and purposes served by the movement, 

 are troublesome obstacles in the way of giving such a completeness 

 to this theory of the Being of the World. Yet again the amazing 

 success which the theory of evolution has shown in explaining the 

 phenomena with which the various biological sciences concern 

 themselves, has lent favor during the latter half of the century to 

 the vitalistic and genetic view of nature. For all our most elaborate 

 and advanced kinetic theories seem utterly to fail us as explanatory 

 when we, through the higher powers of the microscope, stand won- 

 dering and face to face with the evolution of a single living cell. 

 But from such a view of the essential Being of the World as evolu- 

 tion suggests to the psycho-physical theory of nature is not an 

 impassable gulf. And thus, under its growing wealth of knowledge, 

 science may be leading up to an Ideal of the Ultimate Reality, in 

 which philosophy will gratefully and gladly coincide. At any rate, 

 the modern conception of nature and the modern conception of 

 God are not so far apart from each other, as either of these con- 

 ceptions is now removed from the conceptions covered by the same 

 terms, some centuries gone by. 



There is one of the positive sciences, however, with which the 

 development of philosophy during the last century has been par- 

 ticularly allied. This science is psychology. To speak of its history 

 is not the theme of this paper. But it should be noted in passing 

 how the development of psychology has brought into connection 

 with the physical and biological sciences the development of philo- 

 sophy. This union, whether it be for better or for worse, and, 

 on the whole, I believe it to be for better rather than for worse, - 

 has been in a very special way the result of the last century. In 

 tracing its details we should have to speak of the dependence of 

 certain branches of psychology on physiology, and upon Sir Charles 

 Bell's discovery of the difference between the sensory and the motor 



