THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



with religious myths, miracles, etc. Even when people 

 contrast mind with nature, this is only a result, as a rule, 

 of similar superstitions (animism, spiritism, etc.). But 

 when we speak of man's mind as a higher psychic 

 function, we mean a special physiological function of the 

 brain, or that particular part of the cortex of the brain 

 which we call the phronema, or organ of thought. This 

 higher psychic function is a natural phenomenon, sub- 

 ject, like all other natural phenomena, to the law of 

 substance. The old Latin word natura (from nasci, to be 

 born) stands, like the corresponding Greek term physis 

 (from phyo — to grow) , for the essence of the world as an 

 eternal "being and becoming" — a profound thought! 

 Hence physics, the science of the physis, is, in the 

 broadest sense of the word, "natural science." 



The extensive division of labor which has taken place 

 in science, on account of the enormous growth of our 

 knowledge in the nineteenth century and the rise of 

 many new disciplines, has very much altered their 

 relations to each other and to the whole, and has even 

 given a fresh meaning and connotation to the term. 

 Hence by physics, as it is now taught at the universities, 

 is usually understood only that part of inorganic science 

 which deals with the molecular relations of substance 

 and the mechanism of mass and ether, without regard 

 to the qualitative differences of the elements, which are 

 expressed in the atomic weight of their smallest particles, 

 the atoms. The study of the atoms and their affinities 

 and combinations belongs to chemistry. As this province 

 is very extensive and has its special methods of research, 

 it is usually put side by side with physics as of equal 

 importance; in reality, however, it is only a branch of 

 physics — chemistry is the physics of the atoms. Hence, 

 when we speak of a physico - chemical inquiry or phe- 

 nomenon, we might justly describe it briefly as physical 

 (in the wider sense). Physiology, again, a particularly 



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