s of
metaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the
'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed
to pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and
definiteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of
the conclusion of the metaphysicians. But I must avow my own conviction
that the only distinction we can make is one of convenience, and it may
help to make my peace with both parties if I explain where I take this
distinction of convenience to come in. If we are ever to construct an
approximation to the one story of everything, clearly one result will
consist of a relatively few first principles and a great mass of
conclusions which can be inferred from them. And clearly again, since
men differ so widely in their mental aptitudes, some men will be most
successful in the detection of the principles which underlie all our
knowledge, and others most successful in the accumulation of facts and
the detailed working out of the application of the principles to the
facts. For convenience' sake it will be well that some of us shall be
engaged on the discovery of principles which are so very ultimate that
most men take them for granted without reflecting on them at all, and
others on the work of detail. Further, it will be convenient that,
within this second group, various students shall give their attention to
more special masses of detail, according to their several tastes and
aptitudes, some to the behaviour of moving particles, some to the
behaviour of living organisms, some again to the structure and
institutions of human societies, and so on. For convenience we may agree
to call preoccupation with the great ultimate principles Philosophy and
preoccupation with the application of the principles to masses of
special facts Science. If we make the distinction in this way, we shall
be following pretty closely the lines of historical development along
which 'special' sciences have gradually been constituted. When we go
back far enough in the history of human thought, we find that
originally, among the great Greeks who have taught the world to think,
there was no distinction at all between Science and Philosophy. Men like
Plato and Aristotle were busied at once with the discovery of the first
principles on which all our knowledge depends and with the construction
of a satisfactory theory of the planetary motions or of the facts of
growth and reproduction. As