PHYSICAL SCIENCES TO SCIENCE IN GENERAL. 221 



to tbe same result. In all braucbes of science relating to religion, the 

 state, law, art, and language, enthusiastic followers of Hcijd arose, 

 each of whom sought to reform their branch according to his doctrine 

 and to gather rapidly in a speculative way the fruits, which until then 

 could only be obtained by means of slow and tedious labor. Thus it 

 was for a time that a sharp and well-defined antagonism existed between 

 the physical sciences on the one side and the mental sciences on tlie 

 other, and not infrequently was it denied that the former possessed the 

 characteristics of a science at all. 



The bitterness which existed between the two did not, however, last 

 long. The physical sciences proved to every one, by a rapid series of 

 brilliant discoveries and applications, that they contained a healthy 

 germ of unusual productiveness. It was impossible not to esteem and 

 appreciate them. In the other departments of science, conscientious in- 

 vestigators of facts soon raised objections against the presumptous Ica- 

 rus-tlight of speculation. That these philosophical systems produced a 

 beneficial effect is however unmistakable ; we cannot deny that siuce 

 the ai^pearance of the works of Hegel and Schelllng, the attention of 

 investigators of the different branches of mental sciences has been 

 directed more pointedly and more perseveringly to their intellectual im- 

 port and scope than in preceding times, and that therefoi;e the results of 

 that philosophy have not been entirely in vain. 



In a measure as the empirical investigation of facts became more 

 prominent in the other sciences, the contrast between them and the 

 physical sciences was diminished. Although this contrast had been 

 exaggerated through the intluence of philosophy, we cannot deny that 

 it is founded upon the nature of things, and that it will assert its claims. 

 It lies partially in the kind of mental labor involved, and partially in the 

 subjects of the sciences, as their names, physical and mental sciences, 

 indicate. The physicist will find some difficulty in explaining a compli- 

 cated process of nature to a philologist or a lawyer. It would require 

 on their part abstractions from the appearance of the senses and dex- 

 terity in the use of geometrical and mechanical aids, in which they could 

 not easily follow him. Artists and theologians, on the other hand, would 

 perhaps find the naturalist too much inclined to mechanical and mate- 

 rial exphinations, which would seem trivial to them, and which might 

 tend to suppress the warmth of their feeling and their enthusiasm. The 

 philologist and the historian, with whom the lawyer and the theologian 

 are intimately associated by their common philological and historical 

 studies, will find the physicist surprisingly indifferent to literary treas- 

 ures, more indifferent perhaps than is proper and good for the advance 

 of his own science. It cannot be denied, finally, that the mental sciences 

 have to do directly with the dearest interests of the human mind, and 

 with its creations in the world, while the physical sciences work with 

 external matter, to which we may be indifferent, but we cannot neglect 



