it
is called, but subjective; not things, but thoughts.

Now this doctrine will become clearer by considering another use of words,
which does relate to objective truth, or to things; which relates to
matters, not personal, not subjective to the individual, but which, even
were there no individual man in the whole world to know them or to talk
about them, would exist still. Such objects become the matter of Science,
and words indeed are used to express them, but such words are rather
symbols than language, and however many we use, and however we may
perpetuate them by writing, we never could make any kind of literature out
of them, or call them by that name. Such, for instance, would be Euclid's
Elements; they relate to truths universal and eternal; they are not mere
thoughts, but things: they exist in themselves, not by virtue of our
understanding them, not in dependence upon our will, but in what is called
the _nature_ of things, or at least on conditions external to us. The
words, then, in which they are set forth are not language, speech,
literature, but rather, as I have said, symbols. And, as a proof of it,
you will recollect that it is possible, nay usual, to set forth the
propositions of Euclid in algebraical notation, which, as all would admit,
has nothing to do with literature. What is true of mathematics is true
also of every study, so far forth as it is scientific; it makes use of
words as the mere vehicle of things, and is thereby withdrawn from the
province of literature. Thus metaphysics, ethics, law, political economy,
chemistry, theology, cease to be literature in the same degree as they are
capable of a severe scientific treatment. And hence it is that Aristotle's
works on the one hand, though at first sight literature, approach in
character, at least a great number of them, to mere science; for even
though the things which he treats of and exhibits may not always be real
and true, yet he treats them as if they were, not as if they were the
thoughts of his own mind; that is, he treats them scientifically. On the
other hand, Law or Natural History has before now been treated by an
author with so much of colouring derived from his own mind as to become a
sort of literature; this is especially seen in the instance of Theology,
when it takes the shape of Pulpit Eloquence. It is seen too in historical
composition, which becomes a mere specimen of chronology, or a chronicle,
when divested of the philosophy, t