Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 182

158

TWO KINDS OF

§ 49.

acter, that formally they are to be

SCIENCE

[Div. II

equated with the knowledge

who has learned how land must be tilled, and how cattle may be bred to advantage. Observation in the laboratory is certainly much finer, and the labor of thought much more exhaustive, and the skill of invention much more of the farmer,

worthy

of admiration,

but this

is

a distinction in degree

the

;

empiric knowledge of the farmer and the empiric knowledge of our naturalist in principle are one.

If,

however,

it is

just equality the significance of

important to reduce to its that which, in the results of naturalistic studies, is absolutely certain, it should be gratefully acknowledged that in the elementary parts of these studies there is a coinmon realm, in

which the difference between view- and starting-point

does not enforce

Not only

itself.

in the

but in the spiritual sciences

natural,

common realm presents itself. The mixed psychicConsequently, somatic nature of man accounts for this. also, a

the object of the spiritual sciences inclines also, to a cerOnly think tain extent, to express itself in the somatic. of the logos^ which, being psychic in nature, creates a hody

for itself in language.

investigation

is

Hence

in the spiritual sciences the

partly comprised of the statement of out-

wardly observable skeleton of which,

facts. if

Such

we may

the case in History., the

is

so express

it,

consists entirely

which must upon the investigation of all sorts of palpable documents. It is the same with the study of Language, whose first task it is to determine sounds, words and forms in their constituent parts and historic development, from all manner of information and observation obtained by eye and ear. of events

and

facts, the accurate narration of

rest

is the case with nearly every spiritual science, in part even with psychology itself, which has its physiological

This side.

To

a certain extent,

all

these investigations are in

with the lower natural sciences. To examine archives, to unearth monuments, to decipher what at first seemed unintelligible and translate it into your own language to catch forms of language from the mouth of a people and to trace line

;

those forms in their development

;

and

in like

manner

to

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