All the
moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for
often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words
by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal
instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already
_supernatural_ philosophy. The whole body of what is now called
moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract
science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature
are the purest morality. The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of
Knowledge of good and evil. He is not a true man of science who
does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn
something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish
to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and
extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle
exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than
the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with
physics but with ethics, _that_ is _mixed_ mathematics. The fact
which interests us most is the life of the naturalist.
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