in LAWS AND GENERA 241 



law in virtue of which the stone falls expresses for 

 him that the stone regains the &quot; natural place &quot; of 

 all stones, to wit, the earth. The stone, in his view, 

 is not quite stone so long as it is not in its normal 

 place ; in falling back into this place it aims at complet 

 ing itself, like a living being that grows, thus realizing 

 fully the essence of the genus stone. 1 If this concep 

 tion of the physical law were exact, the law would no 

 longer be a mere relation established by the mind ; the 

 subdivision of matter into bodies would no longer be 

 relative to our faculty of perceiving ; all bodies would 

 have the same individuality as living bodies, and the 

 laws of the physical universe would express relations 

 of real kinship between real genera. We know what 

 kind of physics grew out of this, and how, for having 

 believed in a science unique and final, embracing the 

 totality of the real and at one with the absolute, the 

 ancients were confined, in fact, to a more or less clumsy 

 interpretation of the physical in terms of the vital. 



But there is the same confusion in the moderns, 

 with this difference, however, that the relation between 

 the two terms is inverted : laws are no longer reduced 

 to genera, but genera to laws ; and science, still supposed 

 to be uniquely one, becomes altogether relative, instead 

 of being, as the ancients wished, altogether at one with 

 the absolute. A noteworthy fact is the eclipse of the 

 problem of genera in modern philosophy. Our theory 

 of knowledge turns almost entirely on the question of 

 laws : genera are left to make shift with laws as best 

 they can. The reason is, that modern philosophy has 

 its point of departure in the great astronomical and 

 physical discoveries of modern times. The laws of 



1 De caelo, iv. 310 a 34 T 6 8 ek rbv ai/rou rbwov (ptpeffdcu ^/cacrroj rb 

 fly rb avrou eIS6s e&amp;lt; 



