The delineator of nature
must resist the tendency toward endless division, in order to avoid the
dangers presented by the very abundance of our empirical knowledge. A
considerable portion of the qualitative properties of matter -- or, to speak
more in accordance with the language of natural philosophy, of the
qualitative expression of forces -- is doubtlessly still unknown to us, and
the attempt perfectly to represent unity in diversity must therefore
necessarily prove unsuccessful. Thus, besides the pleasure derived and
tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfied longing for something beyond
the present -- a striving toward regions yet unknown and unopened. Such a
sense of longing binds still faster the links which, in accordance with the
supreme laws of our being, connect the material with the ideal world, and
animates the mysterious relation existing between that which the mind
receives from without, and that which it reflects from its own depths to the
external world. If, then, nature (understanding by the term all natural
objects and phenomena) be illimitable in extent and contents, it likewise
presents itself to the human intellect as a problem which can not be
grasped, and whose solution is impossible, since it requires a knowledge of
the combined action of all natural forces.
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