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 . 



aii practical the same way as scientific experiments that they, in fact, 

 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. 1 



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, 



What has the 



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



century ' 



which to former ages seemed to denote the unifying and 



harmonising principles of science and life 1 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 i In this distinction lies the value of 



abstract, in their isolation, in vacua. | 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 ix. 



