•24: Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters. 



thinker a thought. "We may therefore universally make this 

 dual classification, according as we view the mental operation 

 involved, or the attributes of objects which form the subject 

 -of thought. The possibility of science is conditioned upon 

 the possibility of classification. Mere knowledge is not sci- 

 ence, as the world ought to have learned by costly experience. 

 Even classified knowledge may not be science ; it becomes 

 science not through previous classification, but in the act of 

 "being classified, and therefore only as the principle of classifi- 

 cation is apprehended — that is, only as the particular applica- 

 tion of the law of generalization is distinctly recognized. A man 

 may know a book and know nothing more ; he knows the sci- 

 ence only when he is capable of making the book for himself. 

 "Mere knowledge thus differs from science in that the one is 

 held only by the apprehensive powers of the mind, while the 

 -other passes beyond these into the reflective or ratiocinative. 

 Pure science, then, must be wholly abstract. The forms and 

 substances of Nature with which the scientific student deals, 

 ;are only the discrete figures of the young mathematician, to 

 be thrown aside with advancing knowledge. Matter is only 

 the staff on which the mind leans, while too feeble to go alone. 

 It is not the finely chiseled statue that renders a man a sculp- 

 tor; it is the conception which is therein embodied. A day- 

 laborer may have cut the stone, but only the artist could con- 

 cewQ the idea. So in science, we care but little for the particu- 

 lar results at which we arrive, compared with the laws, 

 according to which the results have been attained. 



But conceptions cannot be communicated without being 

 rendered objective. The ideal of the artist is locked up in his 

 own mind, until on canvas, in marble, or by means of some 

 other physical symbol, he communicates his high imaginings. 

 Matter, then, according to the present constitution of things is 

 the condition of intellectual communication. Law cannot be 

 studied as abstract law ; it can be studied only while acting, 

 a,Dd that which exhibits this activity must be matter — some- 



