THE RELATIONS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 167 



tory, imitating the Royal Irish Academy, which, like this, is divided 

 into two classes ; that of the Sciences, on the one hand, and that of 

 Polite Literature and Antiquities on the other. The Institute of France, 

 made up of five Academies, embraces the Fine Arts in its still wider 

 scheme. The second class of our society, with its two sections, aspires 

 to cover the same ground as the Academy of Sciences of the Institute 

 of France, the Science division of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal 

 Society of London, and the National Academy of Sciences of the 

 United States. 



The two sections into which our second class is now divided 

 namely, III, including Mathematic, Physic, and Chemistry, and IV, 

 embracing Biology and Geology are, in their aims and their objects, 

 closely related to each other, and widely separated from Sections I and 

 II, which are devoted respectively to French and English Literature 

 and History. Differences in language thus establish in the literary 

 department of this society a natural division into two sections. In 

 the department of the sciences, however, there is no natural basis for 

 a similar division, and it will probably be found in the near future 

 that subjects of common interest will draw more and more closely to- 

 gether our two sections until, as in the various societies which we 

 have named, the distinction between mathematical, physical, and 

 chemical studies on the one hand, and geological and biological studies 

 on the other, will be lost sight of. It seems to me therefore fitting 

 that we should consider the mutual relations of these two divisions, 

 and inquire into the value of the distinctions upon which they have 

 been based. 



Apart from pure mathematic, which is based upon our intuitions 

 of space, the sciences which now concern us have to do with material 

 nature, and are properly called natural sciences. It is not their prov- 

 ince to look behind or beyond the material world of nature, nor to 

 grapple with the mystery of the Infinite, with which, in the last anal- 

 ysis, the inquirer always finds himself face to face. Our various 

 metaphysical systems are schemes which men have devised to solve 

 this mighty problem, and to translate into intelligible language their 

 efforts to comprehend it. What we call Nature is at once a mantle 

 and a veil in which the spiritual both clothes and conceals itself. " I 

 weave," Goethe makes the world-spirit say, " the living garment of 

 the Deity." This phrase embodies a profound truth. All nature is 

 living ; it is, as the word natura itself, equally with its Greek equiva- 

 lent, physis, implies, that which is growing, the perpetually-becoming 

 or being born ; and this sense, which underlies etymologically the 

 words natural and physical, should never be lost sight of. 



It is a common reproach in the mouths of certain cavilers at sci- 

 ence that it does not explain the beginnings of life in matter. That 

 the plant and the animal are living, is evident to them, but they as- 

 sume that the air, the water, and the earth, the elements from which 



