PKEFACE. IX 



Feeling the need of help in my efforts to solve for 

 myself the problem that involves the whole significance 

 of life, I have not hesitated to seek for help wherever 

 there seemed promise of finding help being no less 

 grateful for a clue in the realm of empirical science 

 than for one in the realm of speculative science. Thus, 

 at length, it became clear to me that Nature is not 

 something apart from Mind. On the contrary, it became 

 manifest that Nature is nothing else than the outer 

 mode of, and hence has its only truth in, Mind. And 

 this conviction seemed to already present, at least in 

 germ, that solution for which I had been seeking. For 

 now the relation of man to "Nature" was seen to be in 

 truth his relation to the Mind which manifests itself in 

 Nature a conclusion which gives to the question as to 

 man's Nature and destiny an immeasurably more hope- 

 ful aspect than Natural Science in the usual acceptation 

 of the term would seem to warrant. 



And not only so, but there appears to be here pre- 

 sented a basis for the complete reconciliation of what have 

 only too commonly been regarded as contradictory views 

 of the world. As already indicated, the empirical and 

 the speculative aspects of thought are by no means 

 necessarily antagonistic. On the contrary, when rightly 

 estimated, they are but the complementary phases of all 

 true inquiry. Nor is this all, for in the given view 

 (justified, as I hope, in the following pages) we have a 

 secure basis for the complete reconciliation of all science, 

 whether predominantly speculative or predominantly 



