THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 19 



sober, the world-conception of the encyclopaedists 

 appears to us as a mechanical mythology in con- 

 trast with the animistic mythology of the old 

 religions. Both views contain undue and fan- 

 tastical exaggerations of an incomplete perception. 

 Careful physical inquiry will lead, however," to 

 a more complete philosophy. "The direction 

 in which this enlightenment is to be looked for, 

 as the result of long and painstaking research, 

 can of course only be surmised. To anticipate 

 the result, or even to attempt to introduce it 

 into any scientific investigation of to-day, would 

 be mythology, not science." 



Physical Science, then, the subject of the 

 present work, is merely one aspect from which 

 we may agree to look at the model of Nature 

 that our minds construct. It ignores the bio- 

 logical standpoint, from which phenomena are 

 regarded in their bearing on life ; it ignores 

 the psychological standpoint, from which they 

 are studied in relation to mind. With these 

 limitations, let us see what kind of model of 

 Nature we are led to build. 



From the complex mystery that is Nature 

 the human mind singles out certain relations of 

 parts of the whole to itself, and thus at once 

 simplifies and formulates the problems, as it 

 simplifies knowledge by the arbitrary division 

 into such sections as physics, chemistry, and 

 biology. The ideas of length and time may be 

 regarded from this point of view as primary — 

 length as the simplest form of space conception, 

 time as a recognition of sequence in our states 

 of consciousness. 



