Page:The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892).djvu/199

Rh only we are not blind, as his other works are. We are conscious, and therefore it is that we see in sense-form, in nature, our own ideals crystallized. The more inner experiences we ourselves have, the more feelings, longings, ideas we possess, the more means we shall therefore have of interpreting nature. It is in vain, think these men, that you gather and heap up natural facts, if you have no heart. Only a poet can understand nature, for the true laws of nature are through and through analogous to the laws of the heart. If (so the romanticists would say), if we have ever been in love, then and then only we know why the plants grow towards the sunlight, or the free-swinging needles turn to the pole, or why the planets are loyal to the sun. If we are artistically complete in our inner natures, then we comprehend why the crystals love their regular forms. To understand the difference between organic and inorganic matter, you have again to study first your own inner consciousness, and to examine its various stages, as they lead up from disorganized sensations to clear and organic reason. For the forms of matter in the outer world are symbolic, are precisely analogous, stage for stage, to these processes of the inner life. In brief, to study nature is to sympathize with nature, to trace the likenesses between the inner life and the magnets, the crystals, the solar systems, the living creatures, of the physical world. It is the part of genius to feel such sympathies with things; it is the part of philosophy to record your sympathies. Artists are often unconscious philosophers, but great philosophers, from this romantic point of view, are never more than consummate artists. Feeling is an indispensable guide to reason. We should never know God did we not share his nature in our emotions. He is only the many-sided and infinite genius. We appreciate him because we young romanticists are geniuses ourselves.