.3,,. THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE. 501 



is he who not only thinks but also feels, he knows, if he reflects upon 

 it, that his body and this thinking principle are, to his experience, 

 one unity. 



Therefore, each of us is a unity with two sets of faculties, material 

 and mechanical on the one hand, immaterial and non-mechanical on 

 the other. No certainty we can attain to about any other object 

 can be nearly so certain as this certainty we have about our own 

 being, above all our immaterial being; '5 first its dynamic, immaterial 

 aspect, and secondly its material, mechanical aspect. That each man 

 is a material, definitely organised substance in one unity, with a dyna- 

 mic, immaterial principle of individuation revealed in consciousness, 

 is the first truth of physical science. It is emphatically the funda- 

 mental truth of Biology ; for biology deals with living things, and of 

 no living thing can we have so complete a knowledge as of ourself, 

 because it is only to the investigation of our own being and activities 

 that the most direct kind of knowledge — our conscious perceptions — 

 can be directly and immediately applied. 



This truth, which a careful examination of our own being reveals 

 to us, has very wide and important results when the phenomena of 

 life, especially animal life, are studied in relation to it. By it, 

 and by it alone, can we obtain any intelligent apprehension of a 

 multitude of physiological phenomena. On this question, however, 

 I do not here propose to dwell, I have only referred to it as a further 

 — as a culminating — instance of the eff"ect which the study of our 

 own intellectual activity must have on our comprehension of the 

 world around us. In the historical order of knowledge — the know- 

 ledge of the individual as well as of the race — the study of what is 

 external to us does come, and must come, first. But as we emerge 

 from, and put away, the things of childhood, we have more and more 

 to reverse this process. For any satisfactory comprehension of 

 natural phenomena, and especially for those of living nature, the first 

 and most pressing need now, is an adequate acquaintance with our 

 own higher mental processes. Such investigation is much less eas} 

 than is the study of what is external to us, but it is more important 

 because most fruitful. The certain, though gradual, effect of its 

 faithful prosecution will most certainly be the overthrow of 

 ' ' sensism," a.nd its replacement by the only system which is satis- 

 factory in its application on all sides, the system which distinctly 

 recognises that the basis of all science must consist of truths 

 recognised by thought as self-evident and necessary — the system of 

 " Intellectualism." 



St. George Mivart. 



Op. cit., pp. 390-391. 



