roduction. Every organ of the plant is the symbol of an idea, and
these ideas form the science of Botany. These Ideas are
metaphysical--that is intellectual, and only their sensible
manifestation is physical. The symbols of these Ideas, being given in
Nature, must be learned from observation before they can be used
intelligently, just as words must be learned before one can speak a
language. Mastery of the means of expression is as essential to the
communication of ideas an is the possession of the ideas themselves. The
botanist observes an individual plant, and notes its characteristics. He
observes others which possess some of these characteristics whilst
others are wanting. He forms a class-type from these agreeing
attributes, and gives this new collocation of characteristics a name.
Nature never presents this class-type absolutely; it is found nowhere
but in intellect. What has the botanist done but to retranslate the
communication of Nature into Idea, and then to express this idea by less
complicated and less physical symbols? Man's province in this case is
simply to interpret the hieroglyphics of Nature into a more readily
comprehended language--to express that simply which nature has expressed
confusedly. The scientist restricts himself to the interpretation of a
single class of symbols, as the Botanist to plants, the Zoologist to
animals, but the end sought in each case is the same--that is, to
change all these physical utterances of Nature into Idea, and to secure
for this Idea a method of expression involving the least possible
materiality of symbol--that is, to change individual facts and phenomena
into general principles, which, because abstract, are unchangeable. When
this has been done, the work of the Naturalist ceases, but the work of
Man, the Thinker is not done; it is only just begun. By assuming the
ultimate expressions of the various natural sciences as individual and
not as typical, we can treat the truths reached by them precisely as the
Botanist treated plants, and, rejecting points of of difference, may
find in them all some central idea. This is the province of the
metaphysician. He seeks the law of Idea, he determines the law of
Thinking, just as all other laws are determined, from a study of the
symbols formulating its expression in Nature. When this law has been
distinctly enunciated, and freed from all intermixture with the
contingent, then the work of the metaphysician ceases, the _summum
ge