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PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



43. 

 Effects of 

 modern 

 analysis on 

 yiew of 

 nature as a 

 whole. 



has had on our view of nature as a whole. For we 

 must not forget that the problem of nature, taken philo- 

 sophically, cannot be solved by detailed researches in 

 restricted areas or by conceptions which refer merely to 

 special phenomena ; further, that even if we multiply 

 these researches indefinitely, they will not lead to a 

 comprehensive view of nature as a whole. Just as in 

 psychology, the enormous growth of detailed knowledge 

 in the domain of the sensations has not approached, 

 but rather led away from, an answer to the problem of 

 the Soul or the essence of the inner world, and has 

 ended by throwing overboard the former term altogether ; 

 so likewise the enormous bulk of natural knowledge of 

 the phenomena and relations in nature has led us away 

 from a comprehension of nature as a whole, and this for 

 two reasons : — 



In the first place, the so-called unification of know- 

 ledge, of which we hear so much in recent times, and 

 which has become a watchword among philosophical 

 naturalists, such as Spencer, consists in reducing the 

 great variety of forms and processes which we observe 

 to a small number of general relations expressed in 

 logical or mathematical formulse. These tend to become 

 more and more purely geometrical when we have to do 

 with the study of natural forms (Morphology), and more 

 and more genealogical when we have to do with living 

 things (Biology). It is true — as I have had ample 

 opportunity to show in earlier chapters — that one of the 

 great influences of Darwinism upon natural science has 

 been to lead the way out of the laboratory, the museum, 

 and the dissecting-room, into the great world and expanse 



