Liebig's Organic Chemistry applied to Agriculture. 543 



owes to the soundness and clearness of his genius, which nobody 

 can deny him to be possessed of. But it does not appear that he has 

 been fully conscious of the intimate connexion of that principle with 

 researches in science. The principle I mean is the possibility of 

 a natural science, founded exclusively on a hylological (material) 

 view of the creation. The only principle or end of all scientific 

 researches must be, to place all nature under strict mathematical 

 laws, which do not admit of exceptions, and which ultimately are all 

 reducible to the laws provided by those movements of matter, which 

 arise from their fundamental qualities. This principle must be 

 applied, without exception, to all objects of organic or inorganic 

 nature. If this term is rightly understood, we must say that there is 

 in nature only organic matter, or such as is subject to be continually 

 changed by movements produced by internal, but material, powers ; 

 and inorganic matter, which, not being subject to changes, is subject 

 to the mathematical laws of nature. The mental functions alone are 

 entirely independent of these laws ; but as the mind derives its origin 

 from a source of quite a different nature, it must eternally remain 

 excluded from the scientific (theoretic) researches of material nature, 

 as an object which cannot be connected v^ith. them. This difference, 

 however, is not very obvious ; and only by a slow progress men 

 have at last risen so far as to form a clear idea of this state of 

 things. The union of the mental and material view of the creation 

 in the same subject, has for a long period led men into error in 

 this respect. This appears in the ancient myths, who attributed 

 to each stone a spirit, — a god ; in the more refined entelechia 

 of Aristotle, who found himself compelled to adopt a spiritual 

 principle for the explanation of the formation of forms ; and in 

 the monades of Leibnitz. We even find that the most ingenious 

 investigators of nature, who, as it were, by instinct, have acquired 

 the idea that the material world constitutes an independent body, 

 have been cried down as atheists. But at last the day began 

 to dawn, natural philosophy gradually freed itself from the fetters 

 imposed on it by scholastic wisdom derived from traditions and 

 ancient writings, and, leaving books aside, it applied itself to 

 investigate the processes of nature by experiments, as soon as this 

 manner of scientific research had been introduced by Galileo. From 



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