i SELF-MUTILATION 43 



these new verbal forms are intended to 

 effect in our conception of the factors 

 in organic evolution? The popular 

 and accepted idea of them has been 

 largely founded on the language of 

 Darwin and of Mr. Spencer himself. 

 But that language has been deceptive. 

 The needed reform consists in the more 

 complete expulsion of every element 

 that is "anthropocentric." In order to 

 interpret Nature we must stand outside 

 ourselves. The eye with which we look 

 upon her phenomena must be cut off, as 

 it were, from the brain behind it. The 

 correspondences which we see, or think 

 we see, between the system of things 

 outside of us and that system of things 

 inside of us which is the structure of 

 our own intelligence, are to be discarded. 

 This is the luminous conception of the 

 new philosophy. Science has hitherto 

 been conceived to be the reduction of 



