384 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



which centred early in fetishism and related thoughts. If, then, we 

 try to free our scientific terminology from such words, we must 

 seek refuge in the Utopia of a lingua universalis, in short, we must 

 endeavor to speak a language which would make science a secret 

 of the few. Or will any one seriously maintain that a thought which 

 belongs to an ancient sphere of mental life must be false for the 

 very reason that it is ancient? 



In any case, it is fitting that we define more closely the sense 

 in which we are to regard forces as the dynamic intermediaries of 

 uniform occurrence. Force cannot be given as a content of perception 

 either through our senses or through our consciousness of self; 

 in the case of the former, not in our kinesthetic sensations, in the 

 case of the latter, not in our consciousness of volition. Volition 

 would not include a consciousness of force, even though we were 

 justified in regarding it as a simple primitive psychosis, and were not 

 compelled rather to regard it as an intricate collection of feelings 

 and sensations as far as these elementary forms of consciousness are 

 connected in thought with the phenomena of reaction. Again, 

 forces cannot be taken as objects that are derived as possible percep- 

 tions or after the analogy of possible perceptions. The postulate of 

 our thought through which these forces are derived from the facts 

 of the uniform sequence of events, reveals them as limiting notions 

 (Grenzbegriffe) , as specializations of the necessary connection be- 

 tween cause and effect, or of the real dependence of the former .upon 

 the latter; for the manner of their causal intermediation is in no way 

 given, rather they can be thought of only as underlying our percep- 

 tions. They are then in fact qualitates occultae ; but they are such 

 only because the concept of quality is taken from the contents of 

 our sense and self perception, which of course do not contain the 

 necessary connection required by our thought. Whoever, therefore, 

 requires from the introduction of forces new contents of percep- 

 tion, for instance, new and fuller mechanical pictures, expects the 

 impossible. 



The contempt w r ith which the assumption of forces meets, on 

 the part of those who make this demand, is accordingly easily 

 understood, and still more easily is it understood, if one takes into 

 consideration what confusion of concepts has arisen through the use 

 of the term "force" and what obstacles the assumption of forces has 

 put in the way of the material sciences. It must be frankly admitted 

 that this concept delayed for centuries both in the natural and moral 

 sciences the necessary analysis of the complicated phenomena 

 forming our data. Under the influence of the "concept philosophy ): 

 it caused, over and over again, the setting aside of the problems 

 of this analytical empirical thought as soon as their solution had 

 been begun. This misuse cannot but make suspicious from the very 



