onceived ideas or prejudices in favour of the
supernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and the
laws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinations
are studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for their
reciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if there
be in the universe a distinction of modes, there is no absolute
separation of laws and phenomena.

The various branches of science are only subjective necessities,
consequent on the successive and gradual order of our comprehension of
things; they are classifications of method, with no special reference to
the undivided personality of nature. All are parts of the whole, and so
also the whole is revealed in its several parts. They come to be in
thought, as well as in reality, reciprocal conditions of each other; and
he who is able to solve the problem of the world correctly in a simple
movement of an atom, would be able to explain all laws and all
phenomena, since every thing may ultimately be reduced to this movement.
It is precisely this which has been attained by certain laws, so that
the study of man must not be dissociated from this conception. It is
necessary to regard him as a product of the forces of nature, with which
he has certain properties in common. Although man may appear to be a
special and peculiar subject, yet he is connected with the universal
system in which he lives by the elements, phenomena, and forces of which
he consists.

It must not be supposed, as it is asserted with ever-increasing clamour,
that such a method and theory can ever destroy the civilized basis of
society, and the morality and dignity with which it should be informed,
as if we were again reducing man to the condition of a beast. Such an
outcry is in itself a plain and striking proof that we have not yet
emerged from the mythical age of thought, since it is precisely a
mythical belief which prompts this angry protest against the noble and
independent research after truth.

It is impossible that the results of positive and rational science
should in any way destroy the necessary conditions of civilized life and
of the high standard of goodness which should form, elevate, and bring
it to perfection. We must, however, remember that it was not rational
science, nor the ethics of law, which established the _a priori_ rules
of a just and free society, but the necessities of society itself led to
the _a posteriori