As intelligence and forms of speech, thought and its
verbal symbols, are united by secret and indissoluble links, so does the
external world blend almost unconsciously to ourselves with our ideas and
feelings. "External phenomena," says Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History',
"are in some degree translated in our inner representations." The objective
world, conceived and reflected within us by thought, is subjected to the
eternal and necessary conditions of our intellectual being. The activity of
the mind exercises itself on the elements furnished to it by the perceptions
of the senses. Thus, in the
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early ages of mankind, there manifests itself in the simple intuition of
natural facts, and in the efforts made to comprehend them, the germ of the
philosophy of nature. These ideal tendencies vary, and are more or less
powerful, according to the individual characteristics and moral dispositions
of nations, and to the degrees of their mental culture, whether attained
amid scenes of nature that excite or chill the imagination.
History has preserved the record of the numerous attempts that have been
made to form a rational conception of the whole world of phenomena, and to
recognize in the universe the action of one sole active force by which
matter is penetrated, transformed, and animated.
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