On l/te Mechanical Conception of Nature. 673 



ters and permitted them to become severed ? 

 Must not the two stages become changed with 

 and through one another, like the parts of one 

 body, since they first together constitute the 

 specific type? Is not the fact of this not happen- 

 ing a proof that the whole " uniformly connected 

 complex " of the specific type is not bound and 

 held together by a metaphysical principle, but 

 simply by natural laws ? 



Now when Von Hartmann comprises the rela- 

 tions of different species to one another under 

 the idea of correlation, such for instance as the 

 relation of dependence in which orchidaceous 

 flowers stand with respect to the insects which 

 visit them, he completely abandons the scientific 

 conception which should be associated with this 

 expression, and compares together two hetero- 

 geneous things which have nothing in common 

 excepting that they are both considered by him as 

 a result of the " Unconscious." The consequence 

 which is then deduced from this correlation of his 

 own construction, viz., that an organic law of 

 correlation is only another expression for a " law 

 of organic development " in the sense of a meta- 

 physical power, obviously cannot be admitted. 



By correlation we understand nothing more 

 than the dependence of one part of the organism 

 upon the others and the mutual inter-relations of 

 these parts, which depend entirely upon a " physio- 

 logical relation of dependence," as Von Hartmann 



