OBSERVATION ANI> REFLECTION. 79 



finest instruments and means of observation. It is true that 

 among these strictly empirical, or so-called exact naturalists, 

 there were always very many who rose above this narrow 

 point of view, and sought the final aim in a knowledge of 

 the general laws of organization. Yet the great majority of 

 zoologists and botanists, during the thirty or forty years 

 preceding Darwin, refused to concern themselves about such 

 general laws; all they admitted was, that perhaps in the far 

 distant future, when the end of all empiric knowledge should 

 have been arrived at, when all individual animals and plants 

 should have been thoroughly examined, naturalists might 

 begin to think of discovering general biological laws. 



If we consider and compare the most important advances 

 which the human mind has made in the knowledge of 

 truth, we shall soon see that it is always owing to philo- 

 sophical mental operations that these advances have been 

 made, and that the experience of the senses which certainly 

 and necessarily precedes these operations, and the knowledge 

 of details gained thereby, only furnish the basis for those 

 general laws. Experience and philosophy, therefore, by no 

 means stand in such exclusive opposition to each other as 

 most men have hitherto supposed ; they rather necessarily 

 supplement each other. The philosopher who is wanting in 

 the firm foundation of sensuous experience, of empirical 

 knowledge, is very apt to arrive at false conclusions in his 

 general speculations, which even a moderately informed 

 naturalist can refute at once. On the other hand, the purely 

 empiric naturalists, who do not trouble themselves about the 

 philosophical comprehension of their sensuous experiences, 

 and who do not strive after genei^l knowledge, can promote 

 science only in a very slight degree, and the chief value of 



