"
[Footnote] *Schelling's Bruno, 'eber das Gottliche und Naturaliche Princip.
der Dinge', 181 (Bruno, on the 'Divine and Natural Principle of Things')
We would here remark that the abuse of thought, and the false track it too
often pursues, ought not to sanction an opinion derogatory to the intellect,
which would imply that the domain of mind is essentially a world of vague
fantastic illusions, and that the treasures accumulated by laborious
observations in philosophy are powers hostile to its own empire. It does
not become the spirit which characterizes the present age distrustfully to
reject every generalization of views and every attempt to examine into the
nature of things by the process of reason and induction. It would be a
denial of the dignity of human nature and the relative importance of the
faculties with which we are endowed, were we to condemn at one time austere
reason engaged in investigating causes and their natural connections, and at
another that exercise of the imagination which prompts and excites
discoveries by its creative powers.
This material taken from pages 79 to 111
COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1
by Alexander von Humboldt
Translated by E C Otte
from the 1858 Harper & Brothers edition of Cosmos, volume 1
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p 79
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