4. But though the world of nature is, in this sense, a world of man's
own creation, it is so in a different way from the world of art and of
philosophy. Thought is indeed its parent, but thought in its primary
stage fails to recognize it as its own, fails to transfer to it its own
attributes of universality, and identity in difference. It sees outward
objects merely in their diversity and isolation. It seeks to penetrate
nature by endless dichotomy, glorying in that dissection of unity which
is the abdication of its own prerogative.[4] It treats outward things
as ministering to animal wants, as the sources of personal and
particular pleasures and pains; and thus induces the sense of bondage,
of collision with a world in which it has not yet learnt to find itself.
It places the end of human life not in harmony with the law which is the
highest form of itself, but in happiness, _i.e._, in the extraction of
the greatest possible amount of enjoyment from a world to which it seems
to be accidentally related. The view of things corresponding to this
stage of thought is what we commonly call their outward aspect. It is
the aspect of matter-of-fact, of logic, of "mere morality," as opposed
to that of art, of philosophy, and religion.