THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 601 



gistics, have exhibited in the light of the general theory of energy. 

 All these things must indeed be so, if what I have said to you of 

 the significance of the new theory is well founded. I need not re- 

 vert to this again. 



But I can not forbear proposing a final question. When we 

 have succeeded in grasping a significant and fruit-bearing truth 

 in its entire, even magnitude, we are only too easily inclined to 

 regard all as likewise concluded in its circle which comes within 

 the field in question. We see this fault perpetrated every day in 

 science, and the opinion which I have devoted half of the time 

 allotted to me in contesting has grown out of just such an error. 

 We shall therefore have to ask ourselves at once. Is the energy 

 which is so necessary and useful for the understanding of Nature 

 also sufiicient for that object ? Or are there phenomena which 

 can not be wholly accounted for by the laws of energy as they are 

 yet known ? 



I believe that the responsibility which I have assumed toward 

 you through my thesis can not be better discharged than by my 

 declaring that these questions must be answered with a denial of 

 the universal competency of energy. Immense as are the advan- 

 tages which the energistic theory of the world has over the me- 

 chanical or the naturalistic, there can still, it seems to me, some 

 points be indicated which are not covered by the acknowledged 

 principles of energistics, and which, therefore, point to the exist- 

 ence of principles transcending these. Energistics will exist by 

 the side of these new principles. Only it is not, as we must 

 already perceive, to be the future most comprehensive principle 

 for the mastering of natural phenomena, but will be manifest, 

 presumably, as a particular instance of still more general condi- 

 tions, of the form of which we at this time can certainly have 

 hardly a foreboding. 



I do not apprehend that what I have said has depreciated the 

 mental advance for which so much has been claimed ; I have my- 

 self extolled that advance. For it has more than once occurred 

 to us that science can never and nowhere recognize any limits to 

 its progress, and even in the midst of the contest for a new pos- 

 session the eye should not be blind to the fact that beyond the 

 ground we have succeeded in winning extend other stretches that 

 must be acquired later on. In the former time we could put up 

 with the dust and smoke of the conflict preventing our looking 

 into the narrow limits of the battlefield. To-day this is no longer 

 permissible ; to-day we shoot with smokeless powder or, at least, 

 ought to and have, therefore, with the possibility, also the duty, 

 of not falling into the errors of earlier epochs. 



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