m
"idea" must be taken as embracing psychic existence in its
entirety--that is to say, feeling and will, as well as reason. The
dry bones of reason must be clothed with flesh and blood. The
appeal is to actual experience. Let Walt Whitman give us his.
"Doubtless there comes a time when one feels through his
whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity
between himself subjectively and Nature objectively which
Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I know
not, but I often realise a presence here--in clear moods I am
certain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning, nor aesthetics
will give the least explanation."

Walt Whitman mentions Fechner. Here is James's masterly
summary of Fechner's general view in this regard. "The original
sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and our scientific
thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as
the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. Instead of
believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, our
individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, which
must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence
than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever
lies outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of
life only; or if we believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on
the one side as bodiless and nature as soulless on the other.
What comfort or peace, Fechner asks, can come from such a
doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into
stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks into
a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature turns into
a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as
a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between
us and all that is higher than ourselves, and God becomes a nest
of thin abstractions."

It is sufficiently well known that primitive man did not indulge
in these "thin" views of nature. He interpreted the events and
changes around him on the analogy of human activities; he
looked upon them as manifestations of living wills. And indeed
how could he do otherwise? For as yet he knew of no mode of
activity other than his own. At first those objects and
happenings were singled out which were of most practical
interest, or which most distinctly forced themselves upon the
attention. The beast of prey which threatened his life, the noisy
brook, the roaring waves, th