Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/127

Rh is forced, as we have shown, to continue abstract, for fear of falling into the incongruous imagery of the vulgar Christianism. The result is, that while, by its antagonism to the corruptions of theology, and the rational examination of the grounds of that antagonism, it gains some true maxims, these are confined to general admissions without details; for the very existence of this protesting philosophy depends upon its quarrel with the positive sphere, which is the lawful domain of theology. Such is the case with the philosophical maxim, that man is a microcosm, and the mirror of the universe, which, although recognized a hundred times, yet remains in the mind unapplied; and indeed the very men who enunciate as a maxim would be the last to sanction any attempt at detailed proof of it, in the field of nature or the sciences. All philosophy, in fine, implies or proclaims correspondence; no philosophy studies it. The shadow of the doctrine is grasped; its power and substance are neither believed nor desired.

But, if philosophy refuses to impregnate the natural sciences with those germs which it contains, or to put them through the circle of growth and fructification, it is only to be expected, that a counterpoise and re-action should arise to its abstruse barrenness; and this counterpoise exists in the sciences confining themselves to reality within the rigid limits of material law. Philosophy was seen to be the protest against theology; science is the protest against both, but proximately and prominently against the former. Hence, for the present, science is opposed to all general principles arising at once from the mind, and bestows its favor only upon its own generalizations, which are so slow in clearing even the material world, that it must be ages of ages before even the existence of correspondence could come before it as a question. For the prospects of a science which receives the seeds of truth at the beginning are very different from those of a science which has to make them before it can sow them; for this is a hopeless task, against the nature and possibilities of science. No wonder, then, that science, refusing to be distended with the data of subjective philosophy, should cleave to matter as a practical certainty, and seek to locate the whole of