If, then, humanity is not God, it is a continuation of God; or,
if a different phraseology be preferred, that which humanity does
today by design is the same thing that it began by instinct, and
which Nature seems to accomplish by necessity. In all these
cases, and whichever opinion we may choose, one thing remains
certain: the unity of action and law. Intelligent beings, actors
in an intelligently-devised fable, we may fearlessly reason from
ourselves to the universe and the eternal; and, when we shall
have completed the organization of labor, may say with pride, The
creation is explained.
Thus philosophy's field of exploration is fixed; tradition is the
starting-point of all speculation as to the future; utopia is
forever exploded; the study of the ME, transferred from the
individual conscience to the manifestations of the social will,
acquires the character of objectivity of which it has been
hitherto deprived; and, history becoming psychology, theology
anthropology, the natural sciences metaphysics, the theory of the
reason is deduced no longer from the vacuum of the intellect, but
from the innumerable forms of a Nature abundantly and directly
observable.
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