32 INTRODUCTION. 



problems of scientific research have thus enormously in- 

 creased ; each advance in science increases our command 

 of certain measurable phenomena in practical life ; each 

 new development in the latter prepares a new field for 

 scientific inquiry. The contact between science and life 

 has become more intimate in the course of our century. 

 This to a great extent has counterbalanced the tendency 

 of modern scientific method, which, operating alone, would 

 have led to endless specialisation ; for it is the peculiarity 



10. of all practical problems that they cannot be isolated in 



Solidarity of ^ ^ -, x. e t- 



all practical ^]^q sauic wav as scientific experiments that they, m tact, 



problems. j i. 



force upon us the necessity of looking at a large number 

 of surrounding and extraneous circumstances, at the total- 

 ity of life and its interests.^ 



If our century can claim to have firmly established 

 exact or positive methods in science and life, and to have 

 furthered in this way the interests of both, the question 



11. \ remains, Has nothing been done to uphold those older, 



Whathasthe i i 



nineteenth those timc-hallowed ideals of truth, beauty, and wisdom 



century 



thri/ais which to former ages seemed to denote the unifying and 

 ""'^''' harmonising principles of science and life ? What has 

 become of philosophy, art, and religion, which were once 

 intrusted with the special care of those ideals, charged 

 - with preventing the falling asunder of the many branches 

 of knowledge and practice, and expected to save us from 

 a loss of the belief in the integrity, interdependence, and 

 co-operation of all human interests ? 



1 Science deals with things in the In this distinction lies the value of 



abstract, in their isolation, in vacuo. \ Lotze's definition of the reality of 



Practical life deals with the same a thing as "a standing in relation, 



things in their position in the real viz., to other things, to all things, 



world, surrounded by other things. See ' Microcosmus,' book is. 



