AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 23 



these two phases or fields of investigation may appear to 

 be mutually exclusive, they in reality merge into one 

 another; so that the physical may be rightly described as 

 the initial phase of the spiritual, the spiritual as the 

 maturity, the fulfilment of what is only vaguely inti- 

 mated in the physical. 



On one side our knowledge depends upon sensuous 

 experience ; on another side it transcends that phase of 

 experience ; while finally it coincides with experience in 

 the widest, richest meaning which the term experience 

 can have. Knowledge is, in truth, the very core of 

 experience, and experience is but the unfolding or outer 

 realization of knowledge. Experience is practical knowl- 

 edge ; knowledge, theoretical or reasoned experience. 



Evidently, then, sensuous experience is neither all nor 

 the best experience. Bather, the best experience is that 

 which realizes with the most perfect consistency the 

 greatest extent and degree of truth. That, doubtless, is 

 the most "practical" way of life which serves best to 

 symmetrically unfold the spirit into the concrete reali- 

 zation of all its powers. 



Once more, then, the sensuous is seen to be the poor- 

 est, least adequate phase of experience, for the reason that 

 it is but the simplest, most rudimentary phase thereof ; 

 while "experience," in its truth and completeness, is 

 just the total process of the development of man in the 

 entire compass of his nature. 



All genuine knowledge is, in truth, experimental. 

 There can be no other. If experimental science has its 

 initial point in the discovery of physical relations, it has 

 its culmination in the discovery of the higher relations 

 unfolded in the world of thought. 



