26 
LE CONTE. 
form of life-force, which may be called nerve force or psychic 
force, to psychology, while all the phenomena determined by * 
free, self-conscions spirit is reserved for philosophy. If so, 
then philosophy belongs to man alone, and, in man, deals 
only with distinctive human phenomena. 
But how is it now, especially in the English and Scotch 
schools of philosophy and still more especially among mod¬ 
ern philosophical physiologists and psycho-physicists? The 
line between the two widely separated, extreme departments, 
physiology and philosophy, is drawn somewhere in the 
region of psychology—some putting it higher, some lower, 
and some claiming the whole of psychology for the one or 
the other. There is therefore the utmost confusion in the 
minds of most persons as to the limits of these departments 
of thought. Some clearing up is sadly needed here. The 
nature of the clearing up which must eventually take place 
may, I think, be well illustrated by what has already taken 
place in other and simpler departments of thought. The 
history of chpmistry in its relation to physiology is pecu¬ 
liarly instructive in this regard. 
ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. 
The older chemists made two widely distinct divisions of 
chemistry with supposed impassable gaps between, viz., min¬ 
eral chemistry and organic chemistry. The one dealt with 
elements and with compounds synthetically derivable from 
elements or from other mineral compounds; the other dealt 
with substances which could not be made synthetically from 
mineral matter, whether elements or compounds, but only 
analytically from substances already made to hand by liv¬ 
ing organisms. Here, then, w T ere two kinds of substances 
offered ready-made by nature, which the chemist might use 
as materials, but which he could not himself make. These 
were elements on the one hand and life-products on the 
other. Starting with the one—elements—he works synthet¬ 
ically upward to certain heights of complexity; starting with 
the other—life-products—he works downward analytically 
