True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

[p.65] But an increasing number of scientists to-day are aware of the
limits of science. They know that the mental models which they have to
frame in order to interpret phenomena are not material things, and exist
nowhere except in a world of mind and meaning. Eucken's conclusion then
is that what knows and interprets is a mental quality. He would rather
call it the life of the spirit of man, or the spiritual life. A
non-sensuous power has to operate in order that the physical world may
be known at all; that power has, further, in a manner unknown, to gather
the fragmentary impressions of the senses, turn them into that which is
mental, combine them into what is termed meaning.

We are led back to the point made so clear by Descartes--to his
insistence on the presence of a thinking subject as the starting-point
for the knowledge of all existence. This truth was elucidated later by
Kant in a manner which the world can probably never get rid of.
Therefore, if so much happens in the mind in connection with the
knowledge and interpretation of the world, our view of the world _after_
this happens in the mind is entirely different from the view which
exists _before_ it happens. Thought stands over against the sensuous
object, transforms the object into a logical construction of meaning.
When one becomes aware of this, not only do the objects themselves
become most problematic [p.66] in their relation to consciousness, but
the very tools with which the scientist works--_e.g._ space and
time--become so puzzling that only by a return to a metaphysic do they
become partially explainable. And thus we are landed in a region of
idealism in the very midst of the work of natural science. Naturalism
has arisen only because the subject was forgotten in the enchantment of
the object. The attention has been turned so long on the object that the