Science might easily obtain a clear idea of her own nature if only she would venture to think out to a conclusion her own trains of thought. The nature of every scientific world-conception consists in comprehending the play of world-events in its entirety, without residue, as relation values. Herewith she remains stuck fast in what may be called conclusionless comprehension. The Buddha explains this fact in the manner already shown; science confronts this fact all uncomprehending of its import, and therefore with some show of justification can argue in this strain:-- “We are undoubtedly making progress in comprehension, as is shown by our increasing capacity for determination in advance. Hence we are justified in presuming the final link in our train of thought--the entire play of world-events as a summation of pure relation values--and in building up for ourselves already the world-conception which we are sure to reach in practice some time in the future.” This is the world-conception which modern physics calls her cosmogony of energetics--that is, that ideal world which is wholly subject to the law of the conservation of energy, and thus is conceived of as consisting entirely of reversible processes not dependent upon time. Of course, the more discerning among modern physicists now clearly perceive that the law of the conservation of energy merely represents from the limited standpoint of physics a _reading_ of the play of world-events. If one forgets that, if one attempts to make it cover actual processes, tries to work it up into a world-theory, then not only does the real nature of the law of the conservation of energy come to light, but also the real nature of the whole of science. For-- The law of the conservation of energy has sense and meaning only in a closed system. In this fact alone its purely hypothetical nature already stands revealed; for never under any conditions whatsoever can actuality have a closed system. Thus at the very outset one has to make a compromise with actuality, a proceeding that is justified only where it is a question of achieving some practical result. If now one makes the law of the conservation of energy into a universal law and on this erects a world-theory, one is bound to posit the universe itself as a closed system; otherwise, to speak of a universe in which the sum of all existent energies remains constant were altogether meaningless. With this, however, science puts herself in such a position that, so soon as she ventures to think things out to a conclusion, she robs herself of the possibility of her own existence, as the following considerations will make evident.