I04 THE CONCEPTION OF LIFE 



necessary through many years. The contribution of any one 

 man will always be very modest in comparison with the whole 

 task, but we shall certainly succeed by our united efiforts in 

 collecting so many generalizations that we shall ultimately 

 possess a unified biological science which will have a much 

 higher and farther-reaching significance for us than our present 

 biology, which consists of single sciences imperfectly fused. 

 This more complete biology of the future wiU I believe be 

 recognized by all as the supreme science. We foresee that it 

 will answer many questions which philosophers have striven for 

 thousands of years to solve. Philosophy, strictly speaking, 

 is occupied chiefly with biological phenomena. Conscious- 

 ness, the relation of the soul to the body, the origin of reason, 

 the relations of the external world to psychical perception, and 

 most subjects of philosophical thought are fundamentally 

 biological phenomena which the naturaUst investigates and 

 analyzes. If these fundamental problems of human thought 

 are ever to be solved, the solution will be presented to us, 

 according to my conviction, not by philosophers, but by natur- 

 alists. I can express my thought better perhaps by saying 

 that the future fusion of philosophy and biology, or the 

 inclusion of philosophy in biology, is to be expected. His- 

 torically, there is a deep cleft between philosophers and 

 naturalists. The philosopher takes existing knowledge, med- 

 itates upon it, and endeavors by deep thought to draw from 

 his knowledge for his own satisfaction the longed for gen- 

 eral conceptions. The naturalist, on the contrary, strives 

 to widenlhis knowledge, and to make new observations. 

 He wishes to increase the number of known facts, being con- 

 trolled by the conviction that the generalizations will follow 

 upon the increased acquaintance with facts. For both the 

 philosopher and the biologist the final goal is the same, for 



