broadcast; it should show the relations of things to each other, separate the important from the trifling. Where ideas resolve themselves spontaneously into such a core of Truth as is called Principle, when they of themselves keep such a line as forms a rule, Theory should indicate the same
Whatever the mind seizes, the rays of light which are awakened in it by this exploration amongst the fundamental notions of things, that is the assistance which Theory affords the mind. Theory can give no formulas with which to solve problems; it cannot confine the mind’s course to the narrow line of necessity by Principles set up on both sides. It lets the mind take a look at the mass of objects and their relations, and then allows it to go free to the higher regions of action, there to act according to the measure of its natural forces, with the energy of the whole of those forces combined, and to grasp the True and the Right, as one single clear idea, which shooting forth from under the united pressure of all these forces, would seem to be rather a product of feeling than of reflection.