THE TKTJE SCOPE OF SCIENCE. XXXI 



region of life, mind, society, history, and education, the traditional 

 custodians of these subjects have bidden it keep within its limits 

 and stick to matter. But science is not to be hampered by this 

 narrow conception ; its office is nothing less than to investigate the 

 laws and universal relations of force, and its domain is therefore 

 coextensive with the display of power. Indeed, as we know noth- 

 ing of matter, except through its manifestation of forces, it is ob- 

 vious that the study of matter itself is at last resolved into the 

 study of forces. The establishment of a new philosophy of forces, 

 therefore, by its vast extension of the scope and methods of sci- 

 ence, constitutes a momentous event of intellectual progress. 



The discussions of the present volume will make fully apparent 

 the importance of the new doctrines in relation to physical science, 

 but their higher implications are but partially unfolded. In the 

 concluding article Dr. Carpenter has shown the applicability of the 

 principle of correlation to vital phenomena. His argument is of 

 interest, not only because of the facts and principles established, 

 but as opening an inquiry which must lead to still larger results : 

 for, if the principle be found operative in fundamental organic 

 processes, it will undoubtedly be traced in those which are higher ; 

 if in the lower sphere of life, then throughout that sphere. If the 

 forces are correlated in organic growth and nutrition, they must be 

 in organic action; and thus human activity, in all its forms, is 

 brought within the operation of the law. As a creature of or- 

 ganic nutrition, borrowing matter and force from the outward 

 world ; as a being of feeling and sensibility, of intellectual power 

 and multiform activities, man must be regarded as amenable to the 

 great law that forces are convertible and indestructible; and as 

 psychology and sociology the science of mind and the science of 

 society have to deal constantly with different phases and forms 

 of human energy, the new principle must be of the profoundest 

 import in relation to these great subjects. 



The forces manifested in the living system are of the most 

 varied and unlike character, mechanical, thermal, luminous, electric, 



