hich exhibits this activity must be matter--something which will
always and uniformly obey. There can be no conception of force except as
acting, and the sole medium of such activity is matter. Thus again,
matter is the condition of all communication from nature to man. Science
is thus, in a measure, determined by the conditions of its discovery and
communication. But we must distinguish between an invariable condition
and that which is thus conditioned. Matter is not science; it is only
the condition of its discovery and communication. Air is not hearing; it
is the condition of hearing. We do not study matter for the sake of the
matter when we study science, but for the sake of the law communicated
to us in these changes of matter, and Law is a metaphysical, not a
physical idea. Reason, not sense, apprehends it. Law is, so to speak,
formulated in the physical, but it is not material. Matter is only the
vehicle of science, as language is the vehicle of thought.

It is plain, then, that just as in mathematics we have a division into
pure and mixed, according as we deal with matter in the abstract or in
the concrete, so we may in any science make a corresponding division,
according as we confine our attention to the laws revealed by matter or
to the matter revealing the laws: in other words; just as we give
attention to the ideas of the message, or to the language in which it is
communicated. The language must first be learned, but the words used to
communicate the message may be separately understood, and yet the
meaning of the message wholly missed. Knowing only the one makes a
charlatan; knowing the other makes a savan. The sciences based upon this
objective study of Nature are denominated Natural Sciences; and because
they lisp the first syllables of Nature's message to man, they should be
his primary teachers. It is by their aid that the universal message of
God to man must be read. They form, as it were, a public highway leading
from Nature to God. But the difficulty is that observing men become so
absorbed in admiring some splendid piece of Divine engineering that
they stop to gaze and wonder, until losing sight of everything above and
beyond, they refuse to advance, fondly imagining that they have reached
the end of the journey.

The science based upon this subjective study of Nature is called
metaphysics. Logic has been defined as "The Science of Thought;" it
should be termed "The Science of Thinking." It is not