INTRODUCTION. 59 



own country for some time past turned aside the minds of 

 men from the graver study of mathematical and physical 

 sciences. The abuse of better powers which has led many of 

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

 purely ideal science of nature has been signalised by the in- 

 toxication of pretended conquests, by a novel and fantastically 

 symbolical 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 phi- 

 losophical pursuits and experimental sciences have remained 

 strangers to these saturnalia. The results yielded by an 

 earnest investigation in the path of experiment, cannot be 

 at variance 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 empiri- 

 cism, which thinks that more is proved by experiment than 

 is actually 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 

 reduce the physical science of the world to a mere aggrega- 

 tion 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 labour of mind applied to nature, but the exter- 

 nal 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 Philosophy of History, " are in some degree 

 translated in our inner representations." 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 ftu> 



