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CHAPTER XL 



ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 



IN the three foregoing chapters I have attempted to trace Abstract 

 the development of the different aspects under which our sciences?' 6 

 knowledge of the real things which surround us, and of 

 nature as a whole, has been extended in recent times. I 

 have brought these different aspects which respectively 

 consider things natural according to their forms, their 

 genesis, or their life and purpose, under the general name 

 of the biological as distinguished from the abstract view, 

 with which I dealt in the four previous chapters. The 

 abstract view tries to arrive at the general properties of 

 all things, which it has succeeded in our times in sum- 

 ming up under the great generalisations of Attraction, 

 Atomism, Kinetics, and the doctrine of Energy. The 

 biological view is interested not so much in general 

 properties as in real specimens the things, beings, and 

 phenomena in which we see the general properties ex- 

 emplified and become real and in their actual union or 

 totality which we call nature. The abstract sciences 

 started on their modern career with mathematics, and 

 progressed through the development and application of 



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