OBSERVATION AND REFLECTION. 79 
finest instruments and means of observation. It is true that 
among these strictly empirical, or so-called exact naturalists, 
there were always very many who rose above this narrow 
point of view, and sought the final aim in a knowledge of 
the general laws of organization. Yet the great majority of 
zoologists and botanists, during the thirty or forty years 
preceding Darwin, refused to concern themselves about such 
_ general laws; all they admitted was, that perhaps in the far 
distant future, when the end of all empiric knowledge should 
have been arrived at, when all individual animals and plants 
should have been thoroughly examined, naturalists might 
begin to think of discovering general biological laws. 
If we consider and compare the most important advances 
which the human mind has made in the knowledge of 
truth, we shall soon see that it is always owing to philo- 
sophical mental operations that these advances have been 
made, and that the experience of the senses which certainly 
and necessarily precedes these operations, and the knowledge 
of details gained thereby, only furnish the basis for those 
general laws. Experience and philosophy, therefore, by no 
means stand in such exclusive opposition to each other as 
most men have hitherto supposed; they rather necessarily 
‘supplement each other. The philosopher who is wanting in 
the firm foundation of sensuous experience, of empirical 
knowledge, is very apt to arrive at false conclusions in his 
_ general speculations, which even a moderately informed 
_ naturalist can refute at once. On the other hand, the purely 
empiric naturalists, who do not trouble themselves about the 
philosophical comprehension of their sensuous experiences, 
and who do not strive after general knowledge, can promote 
Science only in a very slight degree, and the chief value of 
