The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical. It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages have begun.
It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to forbid abstractions—your abstractions. It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: 'forms' not 'ideas.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms—the practically convertible terms of the known—practically —that is the difference.
In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base—the science of Natural History—beginning with the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the Inductive science—which the inquiry into causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to our experience—the causes, which are variable and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and observation there would result in many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means. He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie on that platform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and practice there. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and re-integrate the misapplied and abused name of natural magic, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'
He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that field does yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to the sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new metaphysics—an objective metaphysics—the metaphysics of induction. His logic is but a preparation for that. He is going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all species, the principles that are in all things; and he is going to build, on the basis of those inducted principles,—on the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends 'all.' That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, it aspires to and attains, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and experiment.
He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing peak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific divinity, frowning off—warding off, as with the sword of the cherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the gods, restored again,—the simple powers of nature, recovered from the Greek abstractions,—not 'the idols'—not the impersonated abstractions, the false images of the mind of man—not the logical forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic content—but the strong gods that make our history, that compose our epics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build altars to them or not. This is that summit of the prima philosophia where the axioms that command all are found—where the observations that are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on these, grow. This is that height where the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference below, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms of the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man only, but as it is in all matters or substances.
He does not care to tell us,—he could not well tell us, in popular language, what the true name of that height of learning is: he could not well name without circumlocution, that height which a scientific abstraction makes,—an abstraction that attains simplicity without destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains as its result only a higher history,—a new and more intelligible reading of it,—a solution of it—that which is fixed and constant and accounts for it,—an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest, the universal history, that which accounts for all,—the equivalent,—the scientific equivalent of it.
But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is something that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent speculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to bind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the universal laws of God and nature,—laws that no dogma or conceit can alter,—all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it be, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air palace of the vain conceits of men;—it is going straight up, through that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in nature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,—the unity of which the mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is but an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always seeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience offers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will make for itself if it cannot find it, which it does make in ignorant ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic reality,—which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of their nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new learning also—but it is going to be henceforth the unity of knowledge—not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not belief merely,—knowledge, and not opinion, is power.
That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of species, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence of their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within the human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,—to show the absurdity and ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe beforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the reports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which great nature has herself supplied us,—to correct the arrogance and specific bias of the human learning,—was the first attempt of the new logic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and it has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' Noble, indeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the universal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the whole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice for us is human; but there are other dialects of the divine also,—there are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us; with larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the end of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy and the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two for a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy—the philosophy of science—the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of the nature that is one in them,—the metaphysics of history.
'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual LAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,—its investigation, discovery and development—are the foundation both of theory and practice; this law, therefore, and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'
That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists. Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first. The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'—that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.