26 Wisco7isin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



eering 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 Think- 

 ing." It is not a dead body which we are studying by dissec- 

 tion, but a living, vital Force, which we study by observing its 

 activities'. We find here the same error which we find else- 

 where — 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 com- 

 pounds 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 prin- 

 ciples 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 differ- 

 ence in this respect is, that in Physics, Nature gives us in the 

 first place the material interpretation of the idea — that is, 



