Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/337

 NO part of my doctrine could I have less hoped to see corroborated by empirical science than that, in which the fundamental truth, that Kant's thing–in–itself (Ding an sich) is the Will, is applied by me even to inorganic Nature, and in which I show the active principle in all fundamental forces of Nature to be absolutely identical with what is known to us within ourselves as the Will. It has therefore been particularly gratifying to me to have found that an eminent empiricist, yielding to the force of truth, had gone so far as to express this paradox in the exposition of his scientific doctrine. I allude to Sir John Herschel and to his Treatise on Astronomy, the first edition of which appeared in 1833, and a second enlarged one in 1849, under the title Outlines of Astronomy. Herschel, who, as an astronomer, was acquainted with gravity, not only in the one-sided and really coarse part which it acts on earth, but also in the nobler one performed by it in universal Space, where the celestial bodies play with each other, betray mutual inclination, exchange as it were amorous glances, yet never allow themselves to come into rude contact, and thus continue dancing their dignified minuet to the music of the spheres, while they keep at a respectful distance from one another, when he comes to the statement of the law of gravitation in the seventh chapter, 1 expresses himself as follows :

1 Herschel, Treatise on Astronomy, chap. 7, § 371 of the 1st edition, 1833.

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