Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/624

604 united science of organisms; the physiology of plants and of animals have become coalesced in universal biology; the boundary between the organic and inorganic aspects of Nature is being ever more and more obliterated, and out of the several natural sciences a single uniform, universal natural science is being constructed.

But the deeper natural science penetrates from outward phenomena to universal laws, the more she lays aside her former fear to test the latest fundamental questions of being and becoming (Sein und Werden), of space and time, of matter and force, of life and spirit, by the scale of the inductive method, and the more confidently she lifts her views concerning the universe out of the cloudy atmosphere of hypothesis into the clear ether of theory grounded on fact, so much the more will the gap be narrowed which since Kant has separated science from philosophy. Schiller's advice to philosophers and men of science—

has been followed for more than half a century, to the gain of the natural sciences, but often to the injury of philosophy, which would knock away the firm ground from under our feet. But since Herbart and Schopenhauer, and especially through Hartmann's labors, have the two chief drifts of the work of the human mind been approaching; and if natural science has a mission to mould the future of our race, she must court the purifying influence of philosophical criticism; and this mission, in Dr. Cohn's estimation, the science of the future cannot reject. Its importance rests not merely in the much interesting and useful information which can be made available to trade and industry, for daily economy and universal civilization; she must build a sure foundation for our collective view of the universe, for our knowledge of ultimate and highest things. It must be no longer the case that even our most educated classes, in consequence of insufficient education, have neither interest nor intelligence for the pursuit and acquisition of scientific knowledge. Moreover, science will be no more able to shun battle with other systems of the universe which have been hallowed by the traditions of a thousand years, than were Socrates and Aristotle, Copernicus and Galileo. Victory will lie on the side of truth.

But if anxious souls should fear that, with the advance of a scientific knowledge of the universe among the people, would come a breaking up of political and social order, let them be assured by the teaching of history. When we perceive the flash of an electric spark, we certainly do not take it for a bolt darted by the revengeful Jupiter; and, as the vault of heaven is resolved into air and light, so also must the Olympus be shattered which was built thereon. But the ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good, remain unshaken; they have been all the more firmly established, for they have been deduced from the order