0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

442 MODERN TIMES.
who preached the identity of nature and spirit, and so
founded " the philosophy of nature," of a HEGEL who saw
complete salvation in the idea of the Absolute, and of a
SCHOPENHAUER who declared the world to be will and subjective
representation, might for a time captivate but could
not permanently convince.
None of these systems have influenced the natural
sciences more than that of "the philosophy of nature."
Distinguished doctors and natural philosophers like BLU-
MENBACH, OKEN, KIELMEYER, I. DOLLINGER, OERSTED,
BURDACH, NEES V. ESENBECK, KIESER, K. G. CARUS, and
others attached themselves to it, finding in it a definite
standpoint from which to view, and form a just estimate of,
the collections of empirical facts which surrounded them.
Like the Romanticism which at that time dominated art and
literature—the true child of an age which was struggling
towards some satisfying conclusion to its efforts, selfcontradictory
and incomplete as they were—so too did the
philosophy of nature pursue throughout noble ends, for
it penetrated into the depths of men's hearts, reminded
medicine of her high ethical functions and gave expression
to the doctrine of the unity of the various natural
\ sciences.
The philosophy of nature, having been injuriously
affected by contact with religious mysticism, at first assumed
a hostile attitude towards experimental inquiry and
chose metaphysics for its arena: in the words of HAMANN
" from a general knowledge of the possible it arrived at
a thorough ignorance of the actual." When natural
philosophy, in a spirit of senile self-glorification, applied its
vague and often antiquated definitions to natural science in
its state of daily progress, the only result was that the
latter became entirely alienated from the former. That
clumsy form of stating a proposition, introduced into-
philosophy chiefly by HEGEL, which, with great labour, in a
newly-made dialect, succeeded in rendering the simplest
things incomprehensible, contributed not a little to the