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Doc. 200.] 569
REPLY TO CELSIUS.
did so with the hope and intent that some day experience
would be connected with theory : for experience deprived of
an insight into the nature of things, is knowledge without
learning, and a foundation without a building to rest upon it.
The observations of the outward senses merely furnish data
and give information about things which the understanding
ought to investigate, and concerning which it ought to form
its judgments ; such also is the distinctive quality of a rational
being whose superiority over brute animals consists in being
able to exercise its understanding in matters acquired by
experience.
For the purpose of reaching this noble end, the learned
scientific men of these later times have collected and accumu
lated such an abundant and invaluable treasure of experiments
and facts, that we seem likely to be able soon to advance a
step beyond, and to trace out the secret properties of nature
ex posteriori, or by the analytical method, and thus to meet
our learned forefathers who reached the same goal a priori,
and with their help to climb up a higher Parnassus, than they
were able to do in their times.
Two objections are usually made to this : first, that we
have not yet a sufficient stock of experiments and facts for
this purpose; and that we ought still to go on for several.
centuries in laying the foundation and collecting materials for
the intended building ; some, indeed, go so far as to maintain
that not even our posterity ought to erect the scaffolding for
the building. Regarded in itself, however, this is a mere pre
text for escaping the profound and laborious study and re
flection, which such an important subject requires. For in order
to reach that height where theory is, in order to go beyond
probabilities into that region where pure truths meet, it is
necessary to draw upon and to employ everything that has
hitherto been discovered in nature. We have to draw
upon, in fact, what I call the common experience ; since
there is bond uniting each thing to every
other thing, SO that but little knowledge is obtained
concerning a single or individual thing, unless all things help
and conspire. There is, in fact, a similar bond of union be.
.
tween all the phenomena of nature, as there is between the
a common
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