336 THE nUMAN FORM. 



through the learned world on wooden pegs of abstractions ! To see 

 the reasoners on cause and effect ordering automaton arms of their 

 surgeons, and stowing their own arms away in the closet under- 

 neath their libraries ! To watch the Kants putting off their brains, 

 volume by volume, that their "reasons" may be "pure," and filling 

 their skulls with pure bran instead ! These curtailments are too 

 lamentable for laughter, for we are all maimed in our brethren of 

 the schools. We can only hope that they will henceforth conde- 

 scend to the human form, and not make damnable imitations of it, 

 in words of " leather and prunella." 



The immediate mission of the doctrine of the human form in 

 philosphy, lies in the constitution of analogy as the method of 

 reason in this department of experience. For when the mind is 

 consciously in its moulds, it becomes allied to all existence j like 

 God and like nature ; and philosophy is assimilated to theology on 

 the one hand, and to science on the other ; nay, and as the middle 

 term, to the life of man in the world. Hitherto analogical reason- 

 ing has had no proper place in thought, that is to say, knowledge 

 has been deficient in the principle of association j each branch was 

 afraid of foreigners, not knowing that their races have the common 

 stem cf humanity ; but this once seen, the principle of analogy or 

 friendship begets intercourse, and the mental kingdoms begin to 

 communicate. In this case the analogy falls into no stereotyped 

 methods, but corrected and fortified by an abundant appeal to facts, 

 it touches that infinity which relatively to us is one of the first 

 lessons which existence has to give. 



The first object, therefore, whether in questions of mind, or body, 

 is to find the fact, that is to say, the prime form, or shape, of the 

 thing in hand ; the second requisite is, to see its illustrations, or in 

 other words, to view it in connection with its universe ; and the 

 third thing, or the end, is, to see its universe over again within it, 

 but according to the facts of its own being. The method here is 

 analogical, running from the form of the thing, through the forms of 

 its circumstances, and back from these again to the starting point, 

 which is thenceforth no speck, but a full-sized world. We have 

 already illustrated this in speaking of the idea of power : in discuss- 

 ing which we first find the form and the body of power, which is 



