us vividly realise a source of error too often overlooked in the past — I mean confusion of standpoints. Precise orientation of these various aspects of the world is one of the first duties of philosophy, and the ascertainment of the supreme and ultimate standpoint is perhaps its chief concern. Now of these various aspects the two most sharply contrasted are those which lead us to speak of the world of mechanism and the world of morals, the subject-matter of the natural sciences on the one hand, and that of the moral sciences including history on the other. The one Kant was wont to call the Realm of Nature, the other the Realm of Ends; assigning to the former as its characteristic mark the notion of ‘empirical necessity,’ to the latter that of ‘practical freedom.’
It would be superfluous to spend time in picturing out this contrast in detail:[1] we have only to think of comparing some classical work of science — say Newton’s Principia — with one of history — as, for example, his contemporary Clarendon’s Great Rebellion — to realise impressively the complete diversity of the two realms. Regarding the scientific ideal of Nature as a rounded whole, we may safely say that the world of science and the world of history have little or nothing in common: their terminology, their categories, their problems are wholly different; and so too are the philosophical questions to which they severally and immediately give rise. The one never reaches the individual and concrete, the other never leaves them; for the one spontaneity and initiative are impossible, for the other
- ↑ Cf. my article: ‘Mechanism and Morals,’ Hibbert Jl, Vol. iv. 1905, pp. 79 ff.
