OF NATURE. 



597 



dualism but also many more special discontinuities, which 

 show themselves in all our varied experience, and which 

 may possibly be reducible to that main difference or 

 contrast ordinarily described by the terms nature and 

 mind. This tendency has shown itself, in the second 

 half of the nineteenth century, also in the philosophy of 

 nature, and this quite as much with thinkers who have 

 approached the problem of nature in the purely scientific 

 interest as with those who have done so in a philo- 

 sophical spirit. It is the phenomenon of Discontinuity . ss. 

 which has, more and more, attracted the attention of a ^on f 

 large section among recent philosophers. 



In fact, the most emphatic expression of this diffi- 

 culty was given by a natural philosopher who marched 

 in the van of those modern reformers of science who dis- 

 carded not only as useless, but as harmful for scientific 

 purposes, that entire complex of ideas which invaded 

 German philosophy during the first third of the century : 

 the idealistic and romantic movement. Emil du Bois 

 Eeymond had acquired considerable reputation among 

 philosophers through his ' Eesearches in Animal Elec- 

 tricity ' (1848), which contained in their preface a strong 

 recommendation of the exact methods and an equally 

 strong denunciation of the conception of vital forces. 1 

 He was accordingly classed for a long time among the 



DuB 3 ?- 8 



1 This Preface, as also the 

 Addresses hereafter referred to, 

 are reprinted in the Leipsic edi- 

 tion of E. Du Bois Revmond's 'Col- 

 lected Addresses' (2" vols., 1886- 

 87). This collection, with its valu- 

 able literary notes and references 

 replying to numerous criticisms, 

 has now been republished with 



additional matter. The collection 

 forms together an important record 

 of the beginnings, the progress, and 

 the gradual reform of philosophical 

 thought on the subject of the 

 study of nature, the principles of 

 natural knowledge, and the com- 

 prehension of nature as a whole. 



