Transcendentalism in New England: A History. Frothingham Octavius Brooks

      "Facts are the point of departure, if not the limit of philosophy. Now facts, whatever they may be, exist for us only as they come to our consciousness. It is there alone that observation seizes them and describes them, before committing them to induction, which forces them to reveal the consequences which they contain in their bosom. The field of philosophical observation is consciousness; there is no other; but in this nothing is to be neglected; everything is important, for everything is connected; and if one part be wanting, complete unity is unattainable. To return within our consciousness, and scrupulously to study all the phenomena, their differences and their relations – this is the primary study of philosophy. Its scientific name is psychology. Psychology is then the condition and, as it were, the vestibule of philosophy. The psychological method consists in completely retiring within the world of consciousness, in order to become familiar in that sphere where all is reality, but where the reality is so various and so delicate; and the psychological talent consists in placing ourselves at will within this interior world, in presenting the spectacle there displayed to ourselves, and in reproducing freely and distinctly all the facts which are accidentally and confusedly brought to our notice by the circumstances of life."…

      "The first duty of the psychological method is to retire within the field of consciousness, where there is nothing but phenomena, that are all capable of being perceived and judged by observation. Now as no substantial existence falls under the eye of consciousness, it follows that the first effect of a rigid application of method is to postpone the subject of ontology. It postpones it, I say, but does not destroy it. It is a fact, indeed, attested by observation, that in this same consciousness, in which there is nothing but phenomena, there are found notions, whose regular development passes the limits of consciousness and attains the knowledge of actual existences. Would you stop the development of these notions? You would then arbitrarily limit the compass of a fact, you would attack this fact itself, and thus shake the authority of all other facts. We must either call in question the authority of consciousness in itself, or admit this authority without reserve for all the facts attested by consciousness. The reason is no less certain and real than the will or the sensibility; its certainty once admitted we must follow it wherever it rigorously conducts, though it be even into the depths of ontology. For example, it is a rational fact attested by consciousness, that in the view of intelligence, every phenomenon which is presented supposes a cause. It is a fact, moreover, that this principle of causality is marked with the characteristics of universality and necessity. If it be universal and necessary, to limit it would be to destroy it. Now in the phenomenon of sensation, the principle of causality intervenes universally and necessarily, and refers this phenomenon to a cause; and our consciousness testifying that this cause is not the personal cause which the will represents, it follows that the principle of causality in its irresistible application conducts to an impersonal cause, that is to say, to an external cause, which subsequently, and always irresistibly, the principle of causality enriches with the characteristics and laws, of which the aggregate is the Universe. Here then is an existence; but an existence revealed by a principle which is itself attested by consciousness. Here is a primary step in ontology, but by the path of psychology, that is to say, of observation. We are led by similar processes to the Cause of all causes, to the substantial Cause, to God; and not only to a God of Power, but to a God of Justice, a God of Holiness; so that this experimental method, which, applied to a single order of phenomena, incomplete and exclusive, destroyed ontology and the higher elements of consciousness, applied with fidelity, firmness and completeness, to all the phenomena, builds up that which it had overthrown, and by itself furnishes ontology with a sure and legitimate instrument. Thus, having commenced with modesty, we can end with results whose certainty is equalled by their importance."…

      "What physical inquirer, since Euler, seeks anything in nature but forces and laws? Who now speaks of atoms? And even molecules, the old atoms revived – who defends them as anything but an hypothesis? If the fact be incontestable, if modern physics be now employed only with forces and laws, I draw the rigorous conclusion from it, that the science of Physics, whether it know it or not, is no longer material, and that it became spiritual when it rejected every other method than observation and induction, which can never lead to aught but forces and laws. Now what is there material in forces and laws? The physical sciences, then, themselves have entered into the broad path of an enlightened spiritualism; and they have only to march with a firm step, and to gain a more and more profound knowledge of forces and laws, in order to arrive at more important generalizations. Let us go still further. As it is a law already recognized of the same reason which governs humanity and nature, to refer every finite cause and every multiple law – that is to say, every phenomenal cause and every phenomenal law – to something absolute, which leaves nothing to be sought beyond it in relation to existence, that is to say, to a substance; so this law refers the external world composed of forces and laws to a substance, which must needs be a cause in order to be the subject of the causes of this world, which must needs be an intelligence in order to be the subject of its laws; a substance, in fine, which must needs be the identity of activity and intelligence. We have thus arrived accordingly, for the second time, by observation and induction in the external sphere, at precisely the same point to which observation and induction have successively conducted us in the sphere of personality and in that of reason; consciousness in its triplicity is therefore one; the physical and moral world is one, science is one, that is to say, in other words, God is One."…

      "Having gained these heights, philosophy becomes more luminous as well as more grand; universal harmony enters into human thought, enlarges it, and gives it peace. The divorce of ontology and psychology, of speculation and observation, of science and common-sense, is brought to an end by a method which arrives at speculation by observation, at ontology by psychology, in order then to confirm observation by speculation, psychology by ontology, and which starting from the immediate facts of consciousness, of which the common-sense of the human race is composed, derives from them the science which contains nothing more than common-sense, but which elevates that to its purest and most rigid form, and enables it to comprehend itself. But I here approach a fundamental point.

      "If every fact of consciousness contains all the human faculties, sensibility, free activity, and reason, the me, the not-me, and their absolute identity; and if every fact of consciousness be equal to itself, it follows that every man who has the consciousness of himself possesses and cannot but possess all the ideas that are necessarily contained in consciousness. Thus every man, if he knows himself, knows all the rest, nature and God at the same time with himself. Every man believes in his own existence, every man therefore believes in the existence of the world and of God; every man thinks, every man therefore thinks God, if we may so express it; every human proposition,