388 DARWINISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF LIFE 



consciousness encloses in itself not only the whole 

 corporeal world, but also the whole life of the soul. 

 This cognitive power is devoid of all personality. But 

 we cannot suppose that the all-embracing, impersonal 

 subject, which enfolds the whole of existence, appears 

 in isolation ; for us it is always connected with a part of 

 the psychic life. In this sense one might call psychology 

 a higher science than physical science. But the reason 

 is merely that we cannot study the whole of the psychic 

 life simultaneously, and make it the object of knowledge. 

 However, we will not go any further into this difficult 

 question. 



We have seen that reality contains two separate pro- 

 vinces, the material world and the psychic life, nature and 

 mind. Either province may become the material or the 

 object of science, and the scientific method may be 

 applied to either — the method that enables us to grasp 

 the enormous diversity of objects by grouping many of 

 them together with respect to their common features. 

 As the two sciences proceed to form more and more 

 comprehensive concepts in this way, each of them comes 

 at length to the ultimate and all-embracing concept — 

 ether for the material world and psychic sensations for 

 the spiritual world. In this way physical science and 

 psychology put the keystone on their respective 

 structures, and have then to elaborate and develop 

 their systems in detail. To throw light on and 

 reconcile the two ultimate concepts is the task of a 

 new science, which has to bring reality into unity 

 without taking into account the antithesis of body 



