old circuitous logic, the genius takes the track of the creative
thought,--intuitively, cosmically, ontologically. A subtler analysis is
finely discriminated, a broader synthesis generalized from the materials
accumulated in the mind during the centuries, the globe's contents being
gathered in from all quarters, the Book of Creation illustrated anew,
and posted to date. The new calculus is ours. An organon alike
serviceable to metaphysician and naturalist--whereby things answer to
thought, facts are resolved into truths, images into ideas, matter into
mind, power into personality, man into God; the One soul in all souls
revealed as the Creative Spirit pulsating in all breasts, immanent in
all atoms, prompting all wills, and personally embosoming all persons in
one unbroken synthesis of Being.[E]
[Footnote E: "Truth can be known by the thinking reason. It
has been known by speculative thinkers scattered through the
ages. Their systems exist and may be mastered. Their
differences are not radical, but lie rather in the mode of
exposition--the point of departure, the various obstacles
overcome, and the character of the _technique_ used. Their
agreement is central and pervading. The method of
speculative cognition is to be distinguished from that of
sensuous certitude, and from the reflection of the
understanding by the exhaustive nature of its procedure. It
considers its subject in a universal manner and its steps
are void of all arbitrariness.
In order to detect a speculative system, ask the following
questions of it: 1. "Is the highest principle regarded as a
fixed, abstract, and rigid one, or as a concrete and
self-moving one?" 2. "Is the starting point of the system
regarded as the highest principle, and the onward movement
of the same merely a result deduced analytically; or is the
beginning treated as the most abstract and deficient, while
the final result is the basis of all?" In other words, "Is
the system a descent from a first principle or an ascent to
one?" This will detect a defect of the method, while the
former question, (1,) will detect defects in the content or
subject matter of the system."--WILLIAM T. HARRIS.]
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