48 NATURE AND LIFE. 
out the latent symmetry of living parts and examines fine 
proportions in bodies, but also in his general doctrines as 
to the world. He admits that all Nature is filled with 
forces, lives, and souls, a feeling most eloquently uttered 
in “ Faust,” in “ Werther,” in the “ Poesies;” and, still 
more, he expressly approves of the “ Monadology.” In his 
magnificent funeral discourse upon Wieland (1812), he 
unfolds, in language that Leibnitz would not have refused 
to adopt, all the details of that belief he resorts to in ex- 
plaining the immortality of thought, that is, of conscious 
monads. All that school distinctly supplies us with proof 
of the influence philosophic teachings exert over the mind 
of savants, and consequently over the advance of discoy- 
eries. We thus discern of what advantage it always is to 
guide researches and experiments by the loftier hints of 
speculative genius, and we perceive, too, the need there is 
for the consideration by philosophers of objective reason- 
ings. 
Our age has been too long neglectful of these impor- 
tant lessons. We have seen its philosophy take leave of 
science, to ally itself with literature and morals. While 
science and philosophy, continuing closely united, were 
destined, by the natural progress of things, to gain more 
intimate mutual intelligence, their divorce has retarded the 
moment of a reconcilement and good understanding; so 
highly desirable. No doubt, very well-written books, full 
of excellent thoughts, were still published among philo- 
sophie schools; no doubt, grand discoveries were still 
brought to light in the schools of science; but doctrines 
had vanished, and with them labored and fruitful meditation 
had ceased toexist. Science, departing from high thought, 
lost its dignity and contracted an empirical character. 
Philosophy, by dint of ignoring experimental facts, lost it- 
self in the chimerical. The Cartesian spirit, even more 
perhaps than the spirit of Descartes, rose predominant, and 
