76 COSMOS. 



have given luw life to speculations whicli Avere already fa- 

 miliar to tlia ancients, systems of natural philosophy have in 

 our own country for some time past turned aside the minds 

 of men from the graver study of mathematical and physica,] 

 sciences. The abuse of better powers, which has led manv 

 of our noble but ill-judging youth into the saturnalia of a pure 

 iy ideal science of nature, has been signalized by the intoxica- 

 tion of pretended conquests, by a novel and fantastically sym- 

 bolical phraseology, and by a predilection for the formulae of 

 a scholastic rationalism, more contracted in its views than 

 any known to the Middle Ages. I use the expression " abuse 

 of better powers," because superior intellects devoted to phil- 

 osophical pursuits and experimental sciences have remained 

 strangers to these saturnalia. The results yielded by an earn- 

 est investigation in the path of experiment can not be at va- 

 riance with a true philosophy of nature. If there be any 

 contradiction, the fault must lie either in the unsoundness of 

 speculation, or in the exaggerated pretensions of empiricism, 

 which thinks that more is proved by experiment than is act- 

 ually derivable from it. 



External nature may be opposed to the intellectual world, 

 as if the latter were not comprised within the limits of the 

 former, or nature may be opposed to art when the latter is 

 defined as a manifestation of the intellectual power of man; 

 but these contrasts, which we find reflected in the most cul- 

 tivated languages, must not lead us to separate the sphere of 

 nature from that of mind, since such a separation would re- 

 duce the physical science of the world to a mere aggregation 

 of empirical specialities. Science does not present itself to 

 man until mind conquers matter in striving to subject the 

 result of experimental investigation to rational combinations. 

 Science is the labor of mind applied to nature, but the ex- 

 ternal world has no real existence for us beyond the image 

 reflected within ourselves through the medium of the senses. 

 As intelligence and forms of speech, thought and its verbal 

 symbols, are united by secret and indissoluble links, so does 

 the external world blend almost unconsciously to ourselves 

 with our ideas and feelings. " External phenomena," says 

 Hegel, in his Philosojohy of History, " are in some degree 

 translated in our inner "'epresentations." The objective world, 

 conceived and reflected within us by thought, is subjected to 

 the eternal and necessary conditions of our intellectual being. 

 The activity of the mind exercises itself on the elements fur- 

 nished to it by the perceptions of the senses. Thus, in ^hc 



