

156 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



We may ask why, in interpreting the physical world, 

 we make use of schematised conceptions which biological 

 and even physical and chemical observations prove to 

 be untenable. The reality behind atoms and molecules, 

 for instance, is evidently far more than the schematised 

 atoms and molecules of ordinary physics and chemistry. 

 The answer is that for a large number of purposes the 

 schematised conceptions are practically sufficient, and 

 give us a short cut without which we should be helpless 

 in practical affairs, since we have not the data for framing 

 more adequate conceptions correctly. For biological 

 phenomena the schematised physical conceptions are 

 insufficient practically, and we must therefore make use 

 of special biological conceptions, the relation of which 

 to the physical conceptions must for the present remain 

 more or less obscure for lack of data. It is the same 

 as regards the relation of psychological to biological 

 conceptions. For certain ordinary practical purposes 

 we treat the biological and physical worlds as objective 

 and independent of our knowledge of them ; but this 

 is only a convenient figment. 



From the point of view of each individual science there 

 is a conflict of categories or fundamental hypotheses 

 with those of other sciences ; but from the wider stand- 

 point of philosophy these categories are only provisional 

 working hypotheses. The world of our experience is 

 a spiritual world, as already pointed out above; and 

 this being so we must regard categories as only forms 

 which the riches of this spiritual world pass through in 

 the course of their ever fuller manifestation. 



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