Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/82



LL the sciences form, or at least ought to form, one great system, culminating in the science of sciences. Therefore it is more than doubtful how any science could exist without being somehow in contact with other sciences; and all of them must stand in some relation to philosophy. It is necessary that each science should develop in relative independence of the other sciences. We cannot expect to decide, for instance, chemical problems by physical or purely mechanical laws before we have carefully searched the nature and conditions of chemical processes. But as soon as this has been done we can expect that a comparison between the results of two or more sciences will throw new light upon the subject-matter on both sides. Solomon says: "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Thus the sciences have to grow, each one on its own grounds, and when they have reached a certain state of maturity, they will coalesce with each other. And two sciences will by their coalescence fertilise the one the other so as to produce a new department which may by and by develop into a special science.

Now it appears to the uninitiated as if the spiritual world of science were in every respect different from the world of objective realities around us. While in the world of bodily realities the struggle