In conformity with the character of my former writings, as well as with the
labors in which I have been engaged during my scientific career, in
measurements, experiments, and the investigation of facts, I limit myself to
the domain of empirical ideas.
The exposition of mutually connected facts does not exclude the
classification of phenomena according to their rational connection, the
generalization of many specialities in the great mass of observations, or
the attempt to discover laws. Conceptions of the universe solely based upon
reason, and the principles of speculative philosophy, would no doubt assign
a still more exalted aim to the science of the Cosmos. I am far from
blaming the efforts of others solely because their success has hitherto
remained very doubtful. Contrary to the wishes and counsel of of those
profound and powerful thinkers who
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have given new life to speculations which were already familiar to the
ancients, systems of natural philosophy have in our own country for some
time past turned aside the minds of men from the graver study of
mathematical and physical sciences. The abuse of better powers, which has
led many of our noble but ill-judging youth into the saturnalia of a purely
ideal science of nature, has been signalized by the intoxication of
pretended conquests, by a novel and fantastically symbolical phraseology,
and by a predilection for the formulae of a scholastic rationalism, more
contracted in its views than any known to the Middle Ages.
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