From this rejection of all that is not perceptible to sense, it follows that science may not recognize as adequate causes for “that which is” even as for “that which happens”--in short, for all the phenomena of life--anything else but other phenomena of life. If for faith the thought-necessity, an adequate cause, becomes an “adequate cause in itself,” _a pure absolute_, for science it becomes _a pure relative_. Anything is an adequate cause purely in its relation to another phenomenon of life, and with reference to itself another phenomenon of life again is the adequate cause. In brief, the adequate cause is here just as much an “effect” as a “cause.” With this rejection in principle of all that is not perceptible to sense, science rejects all actual energies. For _an actual energy can never be anything perceptible to sense_, the latter ever and always necessitating the question as to its adequate cause. In the universe as constructed for itself by science, the actuating impulse is simply the various differences that obtain in situation and tension, which are equally as countless in number as the countless processes with which they are given. The play of world-events in its entirety becomes a stupendous process of compensation, and all values become simply values of relation. Here nothing has sense and meaning by itself, but only as it first receives them from others. The purely scientific standpoint can only be the materialistic one, along with which of necessity is given the mechanical mode of apprehending the play of world-events. In the mechanical apprehension of things, the play of world-events becomes a “falling.” Every fall demonstrates the absence of actual forces by the fact that in its downward course it can be computed in advance. The aim and object of all science is computation in advance. The ability to do this finds its due expression in scientific _law_. The proof that upon this path one had arrived at a world-theory, would thus be an absolutely and universally valid law. Such a law science does not possess. Every law, without exception, is an abstraction from experience, and may be swept away again by fresh experiences. Now it is true modern physics lays claim to one universal law--the law of the conservation of energy. We shall have to return to this law later on. Here in passing be it only said-- First, That the law of the conservation of energy has by no means been arrived at upon the legitimate path of science--that is, upon the path of induction--but has been found intuitively. Secondly, The law of the conservation of energy is nothing but a “reading” of the facts, on one hand, by way of definite compromise; on the other, valid only for a limited domain of nature. The compromise is as follows:--