DAE win VS. GALIxiNI. 423 



our mind's eye objectively a spiritual substance, we simply deny the 

 properties of matter as reported to us by our senses, and hence the 

 product of our phantasy proves incapable of causal action and reaction 

 with matter. 



How profoundly in error, then, are they who, often in a tone of 

 scientific pharisaism, lament our blindness in trying to account for the 

 universe without final causes which so easily and so beautifully solve 

 all problems, even those of ethics ! These people simply show that at 

 bottom they are ignorant of what knowledge means. For us there is 

 no other knowledge save mechanical knowledge, however beggarly a 

 substitute that may be for true knowledge, and consequently there is 

 only one truly scientific form of thought, the physico-mathematical one. 

 Hence there can be no more mischievous illusion than that whereby we 

 are led to believe that we explain the teleology of organic nature by 

 calUng to our aid an immaterial intelligence, conceived in our own like- 

 • ness, and working for ends. It is of no consequence what form we give 

 to this anthropomorphism ; whether with the " Timseus " of Plato we 

 postulate as an emanation of Deity in living beings moving ideas, with 

 which never any definite conception has been connected in anybody's 

 mind ; whether with other philosophers we suppose an unconscious soul 

 which constructs bodies after the types of their various kinds ever present 

 to itself, which sees through all the enigmas of physics and chemistry, 

 and which is thus far more intelligent than the conscious soul ; or, final- 

 ly, whether with Leibnitz we suppose God to have once for all in the 

 beginning ordered the universe with a view to ends. It is, I repeat, of 

 no consequence under which of these forms one attempts the impos- 

 sible. So soon as one quits the region of mechanical necessity, he 

 enters the boundless cloud-land of speculation. But it is all to no pur- 

 pose ; for, if the teleological character of nature weaves a crown of 

 thorns for monism, at the same time her occasional antiteleology is 

 anything but a bed of roses for dualism. The appeal to the advantages 

 presented by dualism for the explication of ethical problems is of no 

 avail with one who knows the true state of the case. Must we over 

 again be reminded of the obscurity which Leibnitz vainly labored to 

 remove in his " Theodicy " ? 



The student of nature in the present day can only assume the atti- 

 tude of resignation toward the ultimate principles of things. I have in 

 another place shown how the palpable errors of sudi thinkers as Leib- 

 nitz can be explained by the times in which they live. Between Leib- 

 nitz and ourselves there is an enormous chasm dug by scientific research, 

 reenforced by observation and experiment, by calculation and induction. 



Above all, qualitative research, so called, has on the scientific mind 

 an educating influence, like that of life on character. Being corrected 

 at every step by nature, and constantly reminded of the uncertainty of 

 his judgments and the fallaciousness of his apparently most firm con- 



