THE SCIENCE OF LIFE 



energism (and often spiritualism), is just as one-sided 

 as pure materialism. Just as the latter takes one at- 

 tribute of substance, matter, as the one chief cause of 

 phenomena, dynamism takes its second attribute, force 

 (dynantis). Leibnitz most consistently developed this 

 system among the older German philosophers; and 

 Fechner and Zollner have recently adopted it in part. 

 The latest development of it is found in Wilhelm 

 Ostwald's Natural PhilusopJiy (1902). This work isT) 

 purely monistic, and very ingeniously endeavors to 

 show that the same forces are at work in the whole of 

 nature, organic and inorganic, and that these may all be 

 comprised under the general head of energy. It is 

 especially satisfactory that Ostwald has traced the 

 highest functions of the human mind (consciousness, 

 thought, feeling, and will), as well as the simplest 

 physical and chemical processes (heat, electricity, chem- 

 ical affinity, etc ), to special forms of energy, or natural 

 force. However, he is wrong when he supposes that his 

 energism is an entirely new system^ The chief points of 

 it are found in Leibnitz; and other Leipzig scientists, 

 especially Fechner and Zollner, had come very close to 

 similar spiritualistic views — the latter going into out- 

 right spiritism. Ostwald's chief mistake is to take the 

 terms "energy" and "substance" to be synonymous. 

 Certainly his universal, all -creating energy is, in the 

 main, the same as the substance of Spinoza, which we 

 have also adopted in our "law of substance." But 

 Ostwald would deprive substance of the attribute of 

 matter altogether, and boasts of his Rcjiitation of 

 Materialism (1895). He would leave it only the one 

 attribute, energy, and reduce all matter to immaterial 

 jjoints of force. Nevertheless, as chemist and physicist, 

 he never gets rid of space-filling substance — which is 

 all we mean by "matter" — and has to treat it and its 

 parts, the physical molecules and chemical atoms (even 



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