130 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



idealism all that exists is within mind, though not mere 

 individual mind, but Absolute Mind. Hegel also showed 

 that Kant's general forms or categories are far too limited, 

 and that the general conceptions which we apply to life 

 and human activity must also be included among the 

 categories. Finally he pointed out — and this was his 

 greatest contribution — that the categories are organically 

 related to one another, the lower being nothing but 

 imperfect forms of the higher, which are, as it were, 

 the truth or fully expressed implication of the lower. 



To Hegel Nature appeared as a realm of what one may 

 call fossilised categories ; and he sought to describe 

 Nature on this theory in his Philosophy of Nature. 

 But this amounted to shackling the investigation of 

 Nature, just as Kant had shackled it in still narrower 

 bonds of mechanistic interpretation. The later idealism 

 which has developed in Great Britain has cast off these 

 shackles, including the Kantian and Bergsonian mechan- 

 istic shackles, and of course also the time-honoured 

 claim of popular natural science that matter as such 

 is something which has absolute reality. 



Idealism has thus brought philosophy into real and 

 living touch with living experimental science and living 

 concrete experience. In the interpretation of Nature 

 and of the whole of our experience thought and investi- 

 gation are left free to use what provisional interpretations 

 are found helpful, provided the provisional character 

 of these interpretations is recognised — provided, that 

 is to say, that theory does not outstrip verification. 

 Science gives the high-power; but only partial views 

 which furnish detail : philosophy gives the low-power 

 and general view that enables us to correct, and helps 



