6i STATE OP EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE, AND 



of the intellect, as would reduce the physics of the universe 

 to a mere assemblage of empirical specialities. Science only 

 begins for man from the moment his mind lays hold of 

 matter, when he strives to subject the mass accumulated by 

 experience to rational combinations : science is mind applied 

 to nature. The external world only exists for us so far as we 

 receive it within ourselves, and as it shapes itself within us 

 into the form of a contemplation of nature. As intelligence 

 ind language, thought and the signs of thought, are united 

 by secret and indissoluble links, so in like manner, and 

 almost without our being conscious of it, the external world 

 and our ideas and feelings melt into each other. " External 

 phsenomena are translated," as Hegel expresses it, in his Plii- 

 losophy of History, "in our internal representation of them." 

 The objective world, received into our thoughts and reflected, is 

 subjected to the unchanging, necessary, and all-conditioning 

 forms of our intellectual being. The activity of the mind exerts 

 itself on the elements furnished to it by the perceptions of the 

 senses. Thus, in the youth of nations, there manifests itself 

 in the simplest intuition of natural facts, in the first efforts 

 made to comprehend them, the germ of the philosophy of 

 nature. These tendencies vary, and are more or less power- 

 ful, according to national individualities of character, turn 

 of mind, and stage of mental culture, and whether attained 

 amidst scenery fitted to excite and charm, or to repress and 

 c*Jnll the imagination. 



History has preserved the record of the varied and hazard- 

 ous attempts which have been made to comprehend all 

 phenomena in a theoretical conception, and to discovei 

 in them a single natural force pervading, setting in motion, 

 and transforming all matter. In classical antiquity the 



