The Metaphysicdl Basis of Science. 29 



ics, without this basis in experimental science, is illusory and 

 untrustworthy, wherever the original data are necessarily em- 

 pirical. 



Two conditions are thus necessary to all science : a body of 

 knowable truth capable of being systematized; and an intelli- 

 gence capable of apprehending and systematizing it. One of 

 these conditions is physical and one is metaphysical ; and all 

 true science must be the resultant of Law and Idea, the Ob- 

 jective and the Subjective, the twin forces of Nature and Man. 

 If either of these conditions be wanting, there can be no true 

 science, for science can neither be "evolved from; the depths of 

 the personal consciousness," nor can the scattered letters of 

 scientific truth, as given in nature, arrange themselves into 

 the words of a significant message. Knowledge must be 

 classified before it is science, and that which classifies can 

 only be intellect — discovering and enunciating this classifi- 

 cation according to the laws of mental action. As promi- 

 nence is given to one or other of these two conditions we have 

 the division into Logical and Natural, but the fundamental 

 principle of classification is the same in both — it being simply 

 the law of intellectual action — just as the law which governs 

 the action of the levers of a loom will determine the pattern 

 of the woven fabric. There can, therefore, be no conflict 

 between the methods of Logic and those of Nature. The 

 determining element in all classification, whether of the 

 phenomena of Mind or of the grosser phenomena of Matter 

 is uniformly and always the same — the law of intellectual 

 action. 



Science then resolves itself into a determination of this Law 

 of mental activity, so that in an ultimate analysis, all science is 

 metaphysical, just as all science primarily is physical. Here, 

 as elsewhere, Law can be studied only in its objective mani- 

 festations. The Law of Thinking can be educed only from 

 expressed Thought, but the Law is not objective thought, any 

 more than the idea of the sculptor is marble, or the conception 



