No. 5.] HUNT — RELATIONS OP THE SCIENCES. 259 



oround 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 Historv 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 com- 

 mon interest will draw more and more closely together our two 

 sections until, as in the various .societies which we have named, 

 the distinction between mathematical, physical and chemical 

 studif'S 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 in this time and place consider the mutual 

 relations of these two divisions, and inquire into the value of the 

 distinctions upon which the}^ have been based. 



Apart from pure mathematic, which is based upon our intu- 

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

 with material nature, and are properly called natural sciences. It 

 is not their province to look behind or beyond the material world 

 of nature, nor to grapple with the mystery of the Infinite with 

 which, in the last analysis, the inquirer always finds himself face 

 to face. Our various metaphysical systems are schemes which 

 men have devised to solve this mighty problem, nnd 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 spirit- 

 ual 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 nafura itself, equally with its Greek equivalent, 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 cavillers at 

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



