AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 227 



But, secondly, it is to be noted that, as shown in the 

 introduction to the present essay, the test of the ade- 

 quacy of thought is that of self-consistency. This is 

 recognized everywhere. In natural science that is 

 accepted as the most reasonable hypothesis which brings 

 into harmony the greatest number and variety of facts 

 and relations not indeed by setting aside or abstracting 

 from the contradictions involved in those facts and rela- 

 tions, but rather by reconciling such contradictions and 

 showing them to be, in reality, nothing else than ele- 

 ments of the concrete harmony of the world of nature. 

 That is, the thought of man struggles perpetually to 

 bring itself into harmony with the system of the world. 

 And the specially conspicuous instances of success 

 attending this struggle, are announced and accepted as 

 "great discoveries." And the "discoveries" are nothing 

 else than stages in the growing consciousness of man that 

 the world of nature, the world which on first view seems 

 to be an external and alien world to man, is yet a world 

 whose very essence is to be traced in a faultless system, in 

 a concrete unfolding of absolutely complete, self-consist- 

 ent thought. 



It appears, then, that the secret of man's ability to 

 "think out" the "laws" of nature is precisely this: 

 That the "laws" of nature are nothing else than special 

 aspects of the perfect method, the absolutely complete, 

 self-consistent thought of the World-Energy. So that, in 

 his successful efforts to comprehend nature, man is 

 simply adjusting his own thought to the thought which 

 unfolds itself in nature. It is, in truth, just the thought 

 or method of the World-Energy, and that alone, that man 

 can really think. 



