478 GROWTH OF BIOLOGY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



The man of science, in order to make his researches successful, must 

 limit them to a small part of the innueasurable world problem, quite 

 in contrast with the philosopher. Is it, then, any part of his task to set 

 forth a general conception of the world (die Welt begreiflich erschei- 

 nen zu lassen) according to a formula ? Is not the best notion for him 

 to entertain that the world is capable of being investigated, ])ut that 

 for us, children of the present, the empire of the uninvestigated and 

 of the obscure is a thousandfold greater than the empire of the inves- 

 tigated, of that which has already entered into our science and into 

 human recognition? 



The man of science, guided by such considerations, will l)e conscious 

 that the explanation of the world as a mechanism of jostling atoms 

 rests upon nothing but a fiction, which may ))e useful for exhibiting 

 many relations, but yet does not correspond to the truth. So that 

 world, deprived of properties, supposed l)y Laplace, who saw in the 

 world process nothing but effects of atoms whirling past one another, 

 together with a single groat sum in arithmetic to be done by knowing 

 the Avorld rule, will seem to the man of science to ])e, in comparison 

 with the real world, which speaks to him Avith its infinite properties 

 through all his senses, as a nugatory shadow pictui'e, comparal^le 

 with those shades in the under world that, like fog, eluded the arm 

 of Ulysses when he tried to seize them. 



The scientific man who listens to reason will assent to the proposi- 

 tions in which Carl Ernst von Baer brieflv, pertinently, and beautifully 

 described the essence of science: " Science," said he, "is, in its source, 

 eternal; in its operation, not limited l)y time and space; in its scope, 

 immeasureable; in its problem, endless; in its goal, unattainable." 



This last is particularly true of biology, the science of life. Its 

 problem is of the most difficult. Its field extends in all directions, 

 having the closest relations to all sorts of other sciences. In one direc- 

 tion, supported by chemistr}^ and physics, it becomes biochemistry and 

 biophysics. In a contrary direction it forms a connection with the 

 psychical sciences, which relate to mere human nature, with psychol- 

 ogy and sociology, with ethics and religion. By it the material and 

 spiritual worlds are placed in connection. And so biology, in the newly 

 dawning century, if its cultivators, free from dogmatic fetters of every 

 kind, shall continue to convert the empire of the uninvestigated into 

 the empire of human knowledge, will be summoned to cooperate, in an 

 eminent way, in the inward civilization of the human race, elevating 

 it to a higher stage, not only of intellectual insight, but also of social 

 and moral conduct. It will so help to bring on the time when the won- 

 derful progress which the nineteenth century has brought in the chemo- 

 phj^sical field b}' the expert master}^ over the forces of nature shall 

 first bring to coming generations its full blessing. 



