About the middle of
the eighteenth century these separate parts became united and have
formed one body, a coherent system. Out of this, formerly called
philosophy, that is to say a view of nature as a whole, consisting of
perfect order on lasting foundations, a sort of universal network
which, suddenly enlarged, stretches beyond the physical world to the
moral world, taking in man and men, their faculties and their
passions, their individual and their collective works, various human
societies, their history, customs and institutions, their codes and
governments, their religions, languages, literatures and fine arts,
their agriculture, industries, property, the family and the rest.[33]
Then also, in each natural whole the simultaneous or successive parts
are connected together; a knowledge of their mutual ties is important,
and, in the spiritual order of things, one accomplishes this, as in
the material order, through scientific distrust, through critical
examination, by credible experimentation and process.[34]
Undoubtedly, in 1789, the work in common on this ground had resulted
only in false conceptions; but this is because instead of credible
processes another hasty, plausible, popular, risky and deceptive
method was applied.
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