12 THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 



here present. I am suggesting that the com- 

 bined analysis and synthesis which we call the 

 process of abstraction, and by which we assimi- 

 late and metabolize our observations, may best 

 be regarded as an organic process which accom- 

 panies thought, but is not altogether subject to 

 our OTVTi volition. We cannot make a vine grow, 

 but we can train it in its growth. So also we can 

 train this mental process until we call it reason, 

 but the process itself is going on willy-nilly in 

 the mind of a Darwin or a Jukes. Presumably 

 we see the same process in the mind of a dog 

 who, in recognizing the call to dinner as mean- 

 ing not always meat or dog biscuit but always 

 something to eat, is, in his turn, abstracting 

 and generalizing. 



Anyone who has once acquired the habit of 

 regarding this process of abstraction as a liv- 

 ing, growing thing, with creative and procrea- 

 tive power of its own, will never, I think, return 

 to the idea of stagnant, man-made concepts 

 which are but wax models of a vital and fra- 

 grant flower. Thought is a luxuriant growth, 

 redundant and wasteful, from which here and 

 there we may cut a branch or a twig and whittle 

 it to our purpose. 



With this view of the process of thought as 



