COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



ence between the human mind and its environ- 

 ment. 



The Doctrine of Evolution, in which this 

 dynamical habit of viewing things is reduced to 

 a system, represents also the most extensive 

 integration of correspondences that has yet been 

 achieved. The continuous organization of sci- 

 entific truths by philosophy has all along been 

 a progress in this kind of integration. From 

 the very first crude observations and the earli- 

 est cosmical theories, it is true that succeeding 

 observations have all along had their results 

 incorporated with the cosmical theories, or else 

 new cosmical theories have been framed, which, 

 by including the results of more mature obser- 

 vation, have superseded the old ones. In this 

 way the progress of philosophy has on the whole 

 kept pace with that of science. But between 

 the earlier systems and the more modern ones 

 there is a marked difference in the extent to 

 which special truths in difl^erent departments of 

 science are made to support and illustrate each 

 other. For the gaps in the scientific know- 

 ledge synthesized in older systems were so con- 

 siderable that, in order to make a synthesis 

 at all, it was necessary to incorporate a large 

 amount of hypothetical speculation which was 

 not only unverified but unverifiable ; so that 

 the relations between science and philosophy 

 were much less coherent than at present. To- 



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