2 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



to our positive knowledge, that they themselves are 

 abandoning their former methods for that of the 

 psychologist, who studies even the faculties and the 

 emotions of the mind objectively by means of the phys- 

 ical or experimental method. Many will frankly admit 

 that metaphysical studies are chiefly valuable now as 

 a history of the development of thought, and agree 

 with Renan that " Science, and science alone, can 

 give to humanity what it most craves, a symbol 

 and a law." If this be really the case, if the attain- 

 ment of our desire for an accurate and real knowledge 

 of our environment, its phenomena and the causes of 

 actions, rests with science alone, then it becomes neces- 

 sary to consider whether this hope also must prove to be 

 fallacious. Will the results of experiment made ob- 

 jectively, which must however be interpreted sub- 

 jectively, fail in their turn as criteria of truth? 



Of the various sciences, physics offers probably the 

 best means of attacking this problem, for it lies be- 

 tween the concrete classifications of the natural sci- 

 ences, such as chemistry and biology, and the abstract 

 theories of pure mathematics. Physics, on the one 

 hand, is less disturbed by the multitude of details 

 which often, in the natural sciences, prevent the grasp- 

 ing of a central idea; while, on the other hand, it is 

 more circumscribed than mathematics by the necessity 

 of constant comparison with concrete phenomena, and 

 so avoids the danger of confounding speculation and 



