"Whatever in any degree transcends the material impression, or sensuous experience, as well as all possible knowledge of, and faith therein, not merely in respect to … religion, but whatever is noble, beautiful and great, whatever can lead the mind to, or can be referred to something suprasensible and divine—all this, wherever it may be found, whether in life or thought, in history or in nature—aye, even in art itself, it was the ultimate object of this counterfeit philosophy to decry, to involve in doubt, to attack and to overthrow, and to bring down to the level of the common and material, or to plunge it into the skeptical abyss of unbelief. The first step in the process is a subordination of reason to sensation, as a derivative of it—a mere slough which it throws off in its transformations."