with the falling of a stone.

In the following section we will have occasion to discuss this view as a
_view of the world_; but we believe that the presentation of this idea, and
the exclusive vindication of it as a complete view of the world, needs just
here, where we still stand on the ground of the philosophy of natural
perception, some critical sifting.

In the realm of material nature, _mechanical_ explanation and general
explanation is directly identical; _i.e._, a process of nature remains
obscure so long and so far as its mechanism is not yet perceived, and in
the same degree as its mechanism is perceived, the process also is
explained. The uniformity of law in the occurrence of events according to
the causal principle in the realm of material nature, can be approached by
us in no other form than in that of mechanism, provided we understand by
mechanism an activity according to law and which can be mathematically
estimated as to size and number. So far, therefore, every scientific
investigator in the knowledge of material nature takes his place on the
standpoint of a mechanical view of the world. {152}

But here we have gone to the full extent to which we are justified in
taking a mechanical view of the world, and have fixed its limits in its own
proper realm--the realm of the scientific perception of the material world;
even if we do not join with Wigand in resigning scientific inquiry in that
direction, and express the expectation that these limits are not fixed and
not to be designated in advance, but will be moved farther and farther, and
that not only in regard to the knowledge of the quantity of phenomena
(which even Wigand, as a scientific investigator, naturally admits), but
also in regard to their quality. In our researches hitherto we have often
met such limits. We have found that in the realm of the material world such
important phenomena and processes as life are at present not yet fully
explained. By the mechanical view of the world, we have been led back to
the last elements and to the most elementary forces of matter, but have
been convinced that we are no longer able to find them with scientific
certainty, and that consequently not a single quality of material existence
is really explained and traced back to its last material causes, to say
nothing of the transcendental causes which are entirely inaccessible to our
exact scientific knowledge.

Now there is another realm of existence, just as la