62 



CHAPTER III. 



20. 



A " natural history " of the more sustained attempts that 

 humanity has made to render the Objective intelligible that is 

 to give it a place in a definite apperceptive system would lead 

 us, then, to the conclusion that its differentia is not, as has 

 been frequently supposed, a peculiar method, but simply and 

 solely a definite attitude of the " Self of the moment " towards 

 the Objective, a definite character of the system by which new 

 elements are " apperceived," a character only to be expressed 

 by saying that this system is dominated by a permanent 

 interest in the particulars of the Objective as such. The next 

 chapter in our natural history would examine in turn the 

 various special attempts to make the Objective intelligible which 

 are included in the genus " scientific." Such an examination 

 would, I submit, bring out the fact that it is difficult to declare 

 any concept essentially incapable of mediating a scientific 

 interpretation of the Objective to some thinker. Thus it has 

 already been pointed out that Keppler in his "scientific" 

 period did not shrink from continuing to utilise the conception 

 of the anima mundi. A less violent but essentially similar 

 example is the use of the concept of cause in the sense of 

 transeunt action a notion with which some scientific thinkers 

 have entirely dispensed, while to others it is of cardinal import- 

 ance. Facts of the same order are the ' marked preference 

 of Weber and his Continental school for the concept of 

 action at a distance and the equally marked preference of the 

 British school for the concept of an intervening medium as a 

 means of rendering action at a distance intelligible. Especially 

 illuminating in this connection are the well-known facts that 

 Maxwell based his immensely important electro-magnetic 



