Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/84

72. in one; errors are given up, and that which is consistent only will remain. In other words Dualism makes room for Monism.

It is a good sign of the times that a battle has begun to rage between the so-called natural sciences and the science of language. The old Hegelian distinction between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften has been surrendered; and Prof. F. Max Müller was among the foremost to inculcate the truth that philology is a natural science. If philology is a natural science it cannot be but that its subject of investigation is a part of nature and as such it stands in close relation to other parts of nature. One and the same thing may be the subject of investigation of different sciences. One and the same plant may be an object of observation to the physiologist, to the botanist, to the druggist, to the physician, and to the chemist. Their standpoints and their purposes being different, they will bring to light very different results, and if these results are contradictory among each other the conflict is at hand. It cannot be shirked but must be decided by an honest and square fight. We have witnessed of late a conflict between philology and anthropology concerning the origin of the Aryas and it looks as if this conflict will contribute much to promote our knowledge of the oldest history of mankind, although the last word has not as yet been spoken: adhuc sub judice lis est. We are now confronted with a conflict between Philology and Biology. The first skirmishes have been fought by two men who are entitled to speak, each one in behalf of his science. Prof. F. Max Müller stands up for philology and Prof. George John Romanes for biology.

Professor Romanes takes it for granted that the rational mind of man has developed gradually from the lower stage of the brute. He says in his book "Mental Evolution in Man," p. 276:

"The whole object of these chapters has been to show, that on psychological grounds it is abundantly intelligible how the conceptual stage of ideation may have been gradually evolved from the receptual—the power of forming general, or truly conceptual ideas, from the power of forming particular and generic ideas. But if it could be shown—or even rendered in any degree presumable—that this distinctly human power of forming truly general ideas arose de novo with the first birth of