78 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
of development. As these naturalists are generally called 
nature-philosophers (Naturphilosophen), and as _ this 
ambiguous designation is correct in a certain sense, it 
appears to me appropriate here to say a few words about 
the correct estimate of the “ Naturphilosophie.” 
Although for many years in England the ideas of natural 
science and philosophy have been looked upon as almost 
equivalent, and as every truly scientific investigator of 
nature is most justly called there a “natural philosopher,” 
yet in Germany for more than half a century natural science 
has been kept strictly distinct from philosophy, and the union 
of the two into a true philosophy of nature is recognized 
only by the few. This misapprehension is owing to the 
fantastic eccentricities of earlier German natural-philosophers, 
such as Oken, Schelling, etc. ; they believed that they were 
able to construct the laws of nature in their own heads, 
without being obliged to take their stand upon the grounds 
of actual experience. When the complete hollowness of 
their assumptions had been demonstrated, naturalists, in 
“the nation of thinkers,” fell into the very opposite extreme, 
believing that they would be able to reach the high aim of 
science, that is, the knowledge of truth, by the mere experi- 
ence of the senses, and without any philosophical activity of 
thought. 
From that time, but especially since 1830, most naturalists 
have shown a strong aversion to any general, philosophical 
view of nature. The real aim of natural science was now 
supposed to consist in the knowledge of details, and it was 
believed that this would be attained in the study of biology, 
when the forms and the phenomena of life, in all individual 
organisms, had become accurately known, by the help of the 
