OF NATURE. 



581 



We thus see that in the second half of the nineteenth 

 century great changes were effected, not only in the 

 views which the scientific mind takes of nature, but 

 still more regarding the importance and value which 

 philosophers attach to any and every scientific view of 

 nature and to the fundamental conceptions on which 

 it is based. 



In the first instance, we find that nearly all the 

 leading ideas employed in scientific theory and ex- 

 plained in scientific text-books have been either replaced 

 or remodelled. Thus the word force has been either 

 more clearly defined and circumscribed in its mean- 

 ing, all subjective attributes being stripped off which 

 originally attached to it, or it has been discarded and 

 replaced by the term energy. Something similar has 

 happened with regard to the term matter, w^hich has 



wart' (1905). He closes his ex- 

 position with the following curious 

 words : " A world could be con- 

 ceived in which no science was 

 possible. That it has come to be 

 otherwise can only appear as an 

 accident. Such au accident is, for 

 us, the regularity of the course of 

 nature in consequence of which our 

 conclusions as to the succession of 

 phenomena, which would have as 

 such only provisional value, ac- 

 quired practically unlimited v?,lue ; 

 it does not occur to us so much 

 as even to think of an alteration 

 of the laws of nature, although 

 we cannot say that such alteration 

 were impossible. A second favour- 

 able circumstance which places our 

 science practically much higher 

 than it is theoretically, is the 

 similarity of human beings with 

 regard to the intellectual process : 

 were this not so, then what one 



individual finds would have no 

 meaning for another. Then not 

 only the real, but also the formal 

 sciences would be impossible. We 

 see, therefore — what is frequently 

 overlooked — that also their pos- 

 sibility depends on a supposition 

 which, fortunately, is practically 

 always fulfilled, although we have 

 no right whatever to expect it. 

 Thus we see that the actual 

 existence of science in the ordinary 

 sense of the word depends on the 

 fortunate, but accidental, reality of 

 two suppositions, to expect which 

 we have no theoretical right what- 

 ever. In the foregoing, the ways 

 have been described in which man 

 has tried to gain knowledge : that 

 he has succeeded in this is a mere 

 accident ; from our point of view 

 we cannot assert anything more" 

 (p. 141). 



