Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/372

362 of the fence, to familiarize themselves with the scientific attitude and temper, while the gradual entry of the sciences into the usual undergraduate course at our colleges has not left the earlier education of those who come afterwards to specialize in philosophy so utterly void of scientific knowledge as it used to be. Moreover, the long commerce of our ablest students with German culture cannot but have produced similar modifications. Be this as it may, the point I desire to emphasize is that no conflict can exist properly between science and philosophy, and that a most interesting—possibly the most hopeful—trait of recent thought may be traced precisely in the inclination towards an alliance. It ought to be said, too, that some few, whose work appears to lie in the immediate future—to present symptoms of decided vitality—tend clearly in this direction. And, when we stay to reflect for a moment, why should it not be so? Science and philosophy possess this in common—they search for the truth free from all trammels of dogmatic presupposition. If they prove true to themselves, their object must be the same, even if they view it from different sides and for different purposes. Take them from what standpoint you please, both are 'science' in the broad sense of the untranslatable term, Wissenschaft. It may be of interest, therefore, to devote some attention to the new-old question. What is the relation between science and philosophy?

Approaching the problem historically, it proves something of a shock to learn that the so-called opposition had no existence seventy years ago. Nay, from the time of Descartes' 'Discours de la Methode' (1637) till the enunciation of the cellular theory (Schleiden and Schwann, c. 1838), free interaction, often conscious cooperation, prevailed. Eecall the full title of Descartes' epoch-making tractate, 'Discours de la Methode pour bien conduires sa raison, et chercher la verite dans les sciences; plus la Dioptrique, les Meteores et la Geometric, qui sont des Essais de cette Methode'; recall Spinoza, the optician; recall Leibnitz and his calculus; recall the sober, scientific temper of the entire British school, from Hobbes to Hume; recall Kant's cosmogony, the precursor of modern ethereal physics, and remember that the critical philosopher likened himself, not to Plato or Bacon, but to Copernicus; you find no ground for controversy, but every symptom of mutual good-will. The contrast between this two hundred years' truce, covering the history of thought from the Reformation till the French Revolution, and the undignified, profitless squabbles, still fresh in the memory of many middle-aged men, is so striking that a call for reasons goes forth at once. If this matter can be elucidated, much will have been done to explain away the recent unfriendliness. At the same time, the case presents peculiar difficulties, because the evolution of thought in this connection furnishes