a dead body which
we are studying by dissection, but a living, vital Force, which we study
by observing its activities. We find here the same error which we find
elsewhere--a stopping with the material symbol, and an ignoring of the
intellectual force which clothed itself with the symbol. Astronomy is
not the science of circles and spheres, ellipses and ellipsoids, but of
the Force whose sensible utterances are given in these curves. We might
as well call Painting the science of pictures, or Sculpture the science
of statues. So Language, the medium of thought, is only a symbol, less
material indeed than pictures and statues, but still physical. What we
want in "The Science of Thinking" is not the knowledge of symbols, but
the knowledge of that which is symbolized. The chemist does not care for
the compounds he finds in his retort; he seeks after the truth which
these compounds formulate. Metaphysics and Physics evidently agree in
this; that both are seeking to frame an articulate utterance of the Idea
given in the diverse manifestations of Force--the Idea which includes
all Potencies, the summing up of all phenomena into that final
generalization which includes the intellectual as well as the material,
until at last we reach the essential unity of all Truth.

Science, then, is classification, or the discovery of the principles of
classification, rather than an arbitrary acquaintance with things
classified. Every science, however, must have an objective
expression--that is, must be formulated. In this, both metaphysical and
physical science agree; the only difference in this respect is, that in
Physics, Nature gives us in the first place the material interpretation
of the idea--that is, the basis of classification--which we have only
to translate into idea: while in metaphysics, we first have the idea to
which we must furnish the objective utterance. We see here the precise
difference between what is called the logical and the natural
method--the one being usually called the reverse of the other. The
difference is not so much a difference in intellectual procedure as in
objective expression. For instance: The botanist has before him the
whole range of vegetable forms. He notes resemblances and differences,
and groups plants into species and genera, but his work is not ended
when these are named and known, and their qualities discovered. He is
seeking amidst these multifarious forms for the law of vegetable growth
and rep