32 



INTRODUCTION. 



problems of scientific research have thus enormously in- 

 creased ; each advance in science increases our command 

 of certain measurable phenomena in practical life ; each 

 new development in the latter prepares a new field for 

 scientific inquiry. The contact between science and life 

 has become more intimate in the course of our century. 

 This to a great extent has counterbalanced the tendency 

 of modern scientific method, which, operating alone, would 

 have led to endless specialisation ; for it is the peculiarity 

 10. of all practical problems that they cannot be isolated in 



Solidarity of 



aii practical the same way as scientific experiments that they, in fact, 



problems. 



force upon us the necessity of looking at a large number 

 of surrounding and extraneous circumstances, at the total- 

 ity of life and its interests. 1 



If our century can claim to have firmly established 

 exact or positive methods in science and life, and to have 

 furthered in this way the interests of both, the question 

 remains, Has nothing been done to uphold those older, 



11. 



What has the 



nineteenth those time-hallowed ideals of truth, beauty, and wisdom 



century 

 done for 

 the ideals 



harmonising principles of science and life ? 



which to former ages seemed to denote the unifying and 



What has 



become of philosophy, art, and religion, which were once 

 intrusted with the special care of those ideals, charged 

 with preventing the falling asunder of the many branches 

 of knowledge and practice, and expected to save us from 

 a loss of the belief in the integrity, interdependence, and 

 co-operation of all human interests ? 



1 Science deals with things in the 

 abstract, in their isolation, in vacuo. 

 Practical life deals with the same 

 things in their position in the real 

 world, surrounded by other things. 



In this distinction lies the value of 

 Lotze's definition of the reality of 

 a thing as "a standing in relation," 

 viz., to other things, to all things. 

 See ' Microcosmus, ' book ix. 



