Page:The Idealistic Reaction Against Science (1914).djvu/37

10 system of mathematical laws. To the physicist, who would seek in the development of natural phenomena the permanent and universal relations of co-existence and succession, the world is ever the same in its totality and unchangeable in its inexorable mechanical laws. From this point of view the individual aspects of things must be considered as illusions of the senses; we are under the impression that we see an inexhaustible multiplicity of forms where objectively there merely exists a continual repetition of one and the same form, the same mechanism, a uniform play of forces whose action can be calculated and foreseen to a nicety by mathematical means. Since, then, the evolutionary process disappears when we exclude the possibility of the genesis of new forms, of the production of new characteristics, are we not perhaps justified in concluding that the mechanical theory of the universe, interpreted strictly, must also regard the evolutionary transformation of species as an illusory appearance? Mechanism and evolution are two concepts which cannot be derived from one another, since they correspond to two different aspects of nature: one is quantitative permanence and absolute determinism of mathematical law; the other qualitative transformation and fruitful genesis of individual forms, which no set of abstract formulas comprehends in the fulness of its living reality. The evolutionary conception of things could never be made to fit the Procrustean bed of the traditional mathematical method; it was inevitable that it should (if I may so say) insinuate the poison of dissolution into the veins of intellectualism. The living spirit of history, which had animated the idealistic speculation of the beginning of the century, finding its way with Darwinism into the domain of positive research, whilst thus endeavouring to find itself a place in the schemes of science, breaks down their mechanical rigidity, and exposes the tremendous gaps left by empty formulas in the sphere of experience. The scientific method is thus proved to be inadequate not only in the field of specula-