156 Science Religion and Reality 



1. The theory of evolution called attention to the new 

 qualities which arise in the process of time. How can mechanics, 

 which are the science of eternal laws, and which deal only with 

 facts in their changeless aspect which is repeated time after time 

 in the same manner, how can they deal with those novelties 

 through which the evolution of the world is being accomplished ? 

 Auguste Comte, in his classification of the sciences, had already 

 laid down the impossibility of reducing the more complex pheno- 

 mena with which the more concrete sciences deal to the level of 

 the more simple phenomena of the more abstract sciences. 

 Boutroux, with his theory of probability, was to insist later on this 

 impossibility of deducing new qualitative forms from the inferior 

 grades of fact, such as physical and chemical properties from geo- 

 metrical properties, life from physico-chemical phenomena, or 

 biological products from physical facts. Every new quality which 

 is added to existence is a new creation which is outside the 

 determination of laws. 



The theory of evolution, in short, by enforcing the considera- 

 tion of the world from the aspect of concrete historical develop- 

 ment, showed the insufficiency of abstract mechanical conceptions 

 and, in general, of all abstract rationalism, through which reality 

 is to be found in a system of types, of immutable beings, and of 

 eternal relationships outside the bounds of time, progress, and 

 development. Reality no longer appeared as a closed system, but 

 as a perennial action, and as an irreversible process in its real 

 duration, which possesses creative efficacy (Bergson). 



2. The conception of science also was transfigured by the 

 theory of evolution. The intellect, like all the other organs of 

 life, was considered as a means of adaptation to surroundings, as a 

 weapon in the struggle for existence, as a useful instrument for the 

 preservation and development of life. Like all other organs, it is 

 not something fixed or immutable, but subject to modifications in 

 connection with new conditions of life. The intellectual cate- 

 gories are not for that reason stereotyped forms a priori, having a 

 value of necessary universality, but mutable and relative forms. 



From this application of the theory of evolution to conscious- 

 ness arose the empirio-criticism of Avenarius and Mach and the 

 Pragmatism of Dewey, James, and Schiller. 



3. Researches into physiological psychology led to the analysis 

 of our notions of space and time, asserting their empirical origin and 



