And the labours of the German and
Swedish philosophers to express these essentially conditioned
fundamental laws in terms of weight and number, so that they might be
studied and understood in their most exact expression, and in their
mutual interchange and connection, fitted in exactly with my own
longings and endeavours. Natural science and natural researches now
seemed to me, while themselves belonging to a distinct plane of vital
phenomena, the foundation and cornerstones which served to make clear
and definite the laws and the progress of the development, the culture,
and the education of mankind.
It was but natural that such studies should totally absorb me, occupy my
whole energies, and keep me most busily employed. I studied chemistry
and physics with the greatest possible zeal, but the teaching of the
latter did not satisfy me so thoroughly as that of the former.
What in the current half-year's term I was regarding rather from a
theoretical standpoint, I intended in the next half-year to study
practically as a factor of actual life: hence I passed to organic
chemistry and geology.[75] Those laws which I was able to observe in
Nature I desired to trace also in the life and proceedings of man,
wherefore I added to my previous studies history, politics, and
political economy.
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