
58 NATURE AND LIFE. 
the sciences as well as in literature and the fine arts. It 
grasps reality only by referring it to such ideas, that is to 
say, to wholes in which the mutual relation of the parts is 
perfect. In chemistry, as in zoology and in botany, the 
type is the fundamental idea from the poimt of view of 
classifying. The great discoveries of our day, especially 
the late discoveries in organic chemistry, bring this strong- 
ly into view. They all issue from some speculative theory 
as to the peculiarly rational structure of things. The drue 
philosophy of mind consists, perhaps, in the study of these 
fundamental conceptions of the understanding, as the true 
philosophy of Nature lies in the study of the primordial 
forces showing forth by the sensible phenomena of the 
world external to us. Thus, by a new path, we reach the 
confirmation of Leibnitz’s ideas; for these general concepts, 
these logical expressions, these universals, on the one hand, 
furnish proof of those innate*aptitudes in the mind upon 
which Leibnitz endeavored to construct mental philoso- 
phy; and, on the other, they imply in: Nature a tendency 
toward development, toward metamorphosis and _ perfec- 
tion, in other words, an intelligent force. 
A brilliant school of mathematicians and physicists 
has lately pronounced against the doctrines the progress of 
which in the natural sciences we have just traced. Its dis- 
ciples profess an exaggerated Cartesianism, denying any 
real existence to inner forces, to spontaneities, to actuali- 
ties, to monads. It is an avowed return to geometrism, 
with all its strictnesses, and with all its illusions too, 
That school rejects attraction and affinity under the pre- 
tense that it is impossible to form any conception of those 
forces without imagining in matter a multitude of little 
hands hooking on to each other. It throws every thing 
into the shape of a formula, and asserts that any thing is 
chimerical which wants the capacity of being expressed 
mathematically. That school defines force as the product 
