in SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 207 



Its own special object is to speculate, that is to say, 

 to see ; its attitude toward the living should not be 

 that ofjjcience, which aims only at action, and which, 

 .being able to act only by means jyf^ jflfidLJKLattery . . 

 . presents .. jto itself^tFe rest oF reality in this single 

 respect. What musFBie~HsuT^ 



and psychological facts to positive science alone, as it 

 has left, and rightly left, physical facts ? It will accept 

 ^^r^ri_ajnechanistic conception of all nature, a con 

 ception .unreflectecl~and even unconscious, the outcome 7 

 of the material need. It will a -priori accept the 

 doctrine of the simple unity of knowledge and of the. 

 abstract unity of nature. 



The moment it does so, its fate is sealed. The 

 philosopher has no longer any choice save between a 

 metaphysical dogmatism and a metaphysical scepticism, 

 both of which rest, at bottom, on the same postulate, 

 and neither of which adds anything to positive science. 

 He may hypostasize the unity of nature, or, what 

 comes to the same thing, the unity of science, in a 

 being who is nothing since he does nothing, an in 

 effectual God who simply sums up in himself all the 

 given ; or in an eternal Matter from whose womb 

 have been poured out the properties of things and 

 the laws of nature ; or, again, in a pure Form which 

 endeavours to seize an unseizable multiplicity, and 

 which is, as we will, the form of nature or the form 

 of thought. All these philosophies tell us, in their 

 different languages^ that^science ls~&quot;rigrIFTo&quot;~treat--t 

 livin a g T^t* i *&quot;***;. P.H; j7* qf there is no difference o 



_ value, no distinction to be made between the results^,, 

 which intellect arrives at in applying its categories, 

 whether it rests on inert matter or attacks life. 



In many cases, however, we feel the frame cracking. 



