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ARTICLE X. 
The Kingdoms of Nature, their Life and Affinity ; 
by Dr. C. G. Carus. 
From the Zeitschrift fiir Natur und Heilkunde, Band 1.Hefte :. Dresden, 1819, 
Waren man awakes from that state in which he is but the passive 
recipient of impressions from the external world, and when therefore, in- 
stead of reposing in the consciousness of his increasing in strength and 
stature and exhibiting a reciprocity of bodily action of various kinds 
with surrounding objects, he feels the spirit, the infusion of the breath of 
God, in motion within him, he is powerfully impelled to endeavour, by 
bringing the relations between the spirit within and the phenomena 
without into a clear point of view, to obtain a clearer knowledge of him- 
self. This desire has its origin in a most distinct conviction that without 
such knowledge no real harmony, no true internal equilibrium can be 
conceived to exist in man, and that nature and he must therefore stand 
as two eternally separated beings. But a feeling that things are sepa- 
rated which’at the same moment exist in and through each other, is 
totally incompatible with that internal repose which, as we ourselves 
are one, is to be found not in the sense of separation but in the con- 
sciousness of unity. In this fact we clearly see what it was that gave 
birth to those speculations, by means of which it was sought for so 
many ages, sometimes with more and sometimes with less sincerity and 
freedom, to ascertain the relations between the phenomena of nature 
and the laws of mind. In those speculations, however, we have oceasion 
to observe, how frequently that which stands forth in us most plainly and 
undisguisedly, and which for that reason should be supposed discernible 
and known at the very first, was exactly the least heeded and last dis- 
covered. It was, no doubt, owing to this circumstance, that many a 
truth which presented itself almost unveiled to the pure and unsophis- 
ticated feeling of the genuine children of nature remained a hidden 
mystery to the sages of mankind. 
In order to avoid such errors it is particularly important that we 
should give a general and exact definition of the terms proof and expla- 
nation. Now to explain is but to consider a phenomenon in the clear- 
ness of a superior light, and to prove is but to trace a subordinate 
proposition up to a higher, or rather to aprimary truth. The supreme and 
one, which is alike the foundation of nature and mind, can therefore 
- no more be proved or explained than the splendour of the sun ean 
be increased by means of some terrestrial lizht. On the contrary, the 
