5i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in short, are the laws or principles governing the moral world, and how 

 do these principles find expression in the life of man ? Closely related 

 to psychology and ethics, and furnishing them with a large body of 

 facts, are the social sciences, which consider the thoughts, feelings and 

 volitions of social organisms, or man in society; the ends which such 

 organisms serve, and the means with which such ends are reached. So- 

 ciety, unconsciously or consciously, aims to realize certain ends. What 

 are these ends? How are they realized? We must study the forms 

 which realize them, we must study human customs and institutions, 

 and trace their development. Sociology is the name given to the science 

 which performs this task. These ends cannot be realized without or- 

 ganization, or the state. What are the forms of government, and how 

 do governments realize their ends? The theory of the state, or the 

 science of politics, discusses these questions; it bears the same relation 

 to sociology that ethics bears to psychology. The philosophy of religion 

 investigates those inner facts of human experience which we call re- 

 ligious facts, and is, in so far as it does this, a branch of psychology. 

 But it also studies their external expression, the different forms, and 

 traces the development of positive religions in order to discover from 

 the material thus presented the principles common to all religions. 

 What is the idea which seems to be realizing itself in the history of 

 religion ? 



The philosopher must pay attention to the fundamental mental sci- 

 ences, psychology, logic, ethics, sesthetics and the philosophy of re- 

 ligion. These sciences differ from the so-called natural sciences only 

 in their content or subject-matter, not in their general form or methods. 

 All sciences, both physical and mental, occupy themselves with observ- 

 ing phenomena and reducing them to laws, employing all available 

 means of accomplishing this task. But no science restricts itself to 

 a mere registration of laws; it seeks to discover the relations between 

 these laws, to connect them, and to reduce them to their simplest forms. 

 The physicist refers all material manifestations to one underlying 

 principle or force. The biologist finds it impossible to explain his 

 facts by means of purely mechanical principles. " How can we recon- 

 cile the purposiveness of organisms with the principle of causation?"* 

 The psychologist, again, is brought into contact with another group of 

 facts which the atomic theory cannot account for ; mind cannot be ex- 

 plained on a purely materialistic basis. The scientist may be able, by 

 means of mechanical laws, to show how a planetary system was evolved 

 from chaos, but can he account for the existence of the amoeba ? Can 

 his principles account for the simplest fact of consciousness ? To quote 

 Kant's celebrated words : " It seems to me," he declares in his Theory 

 of the Heavens, "that, in a certain sense, a man may say without pre- 



* Wundt, Essays, p. 5. 



