188 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



our environment; and to promote our comfort and 

 power. But, allured by their great and legitimate suc- 

 cess in these two fields of activity, they have also tried 

 to discover the hidden causes of phenomena, with the 

 result that a sort of fictitious world has been created 

 by them, in which the laws of objective, or physical, 

 phenomena are inextricably confounded with the de- 

 ductions of subjective psychology. Science is made 

 metaphysical, and at the same time pretends to sup- 

 plant metaphysics. 



This encroachment, naturally, has not been accom- 

 plished without a sharp conflict, and the history of 

 the nineteenth century is permeated with the struggle 

 of science against religion and philosophy. The issue 

 was clearly in favor of science, which has not only 

 gradually become a dominating influence in education 

 and in thought, but has also changed our attitude to- 

 wards history, politics, and social life to such an extent 

 that these subjects are now classed as sciences. Even 

 philosophy and religion were unsettled by its growing 

 power; instead of basing character on attributes pecu- 

 liar to man and designated by the name of spiritual 

 powers, many now include man with the rest of organic 

 life as subject only to the statistical and impersonal 

 laws of heredity and environment: metaphysics tends 

 towards a philosophy of science; religion to eugenics. 



Both the conflict and the victory were no doubt in- 

 evitable. But the results have not been on the whole 



