58 NATURE AND LIFE. 



the sciences as well as in literature and the fine arts. It 

 grasps reality only by referring it to such ideas, that is to 

 say, to wholes in which the mutual relation of the parts is 

 perfect. In chemistry, as in zoology and in botany, the 

 type is the fundamental idea from the point of view of 

 classifying. The great discoveries of our day, especially 

 the late discoveries in organic chemistry, bring this strong- 

 ly into view. They all issue from some speculative theory 

 as to the peculiarly rational structure of things. The true 

 philosophy of mind consists, perhaps, in the study of these 

 fundamental conceptions of the understanding, as the true 

 philosophy of Nature lies in the study of the primordial 

 forces showing forth by the sensible phenomena of the 

 world external to us. Thus, by a new path, we reach the 

 confirmation of Leibnitz's ideas ; for these general concepts, 

 these logical expressions, these universals, on the one hand, 

 furnish proof of those innate aptitudes in the mind upon 

 which Leibnitz endeavored to construct mental philoso- 

 phy ; and, on the other, they imply in Nature a tendency 

 toward development, toward metamorphosis and perfec- 

 tion, in other words, an intelligent force. 



A brilliant school of mathematicians and physicists 

 has lately pronounced against the doctrines the progress of 

 which in the natural sciences we have just traced. Its dis- 

 ciples profess an exaggerated Cartesianism, denying any 

 real existence to inner forces, to spontaneities, to actuali- 

 ties, to monads. It is an avowed return to geometrism, 

 with all its strictnesses, and with all its illusions too. 

 That school rejects attraction and affinity under the pre- 

 tense that it is impossible to form any conception of those 

 forces without imagining in matter a multitude of little 

 hands hooking on to each other. It throws every thing 

 into the shape of a formula, and asserts that any thing is 

 chimerical which wants the capacity of being expressed 

 mathematically. That school defines force as the product 



