200 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE.. 



i. THE different aspects of nature which I have reviewed 



The abstract 



sciences. in the foregoing chapters, and the various sciences which 

 have been elaborated by their aid, comprise what may 

 appropriately be termed the abstract study of natural 

 objects and phenomena. Though all the methods of 

 reasoning with which we have so far become acquainted 

 originated primarily through observation and in the re- 

 flection over things natural, they have this in common, 

 that they for the purpose of examination remove 

 their objects out of the position and surroundings which 

 nature has assigned to them : that they abstract them. 

 This process of abstraction is either literally a process of 

 removal from one place to another, from the great work- 

 and store-house of nature herself, to the small workroom, 

 the laboratory of the experimenter ; or where such re- 

 moval is not possible the process is carried on merely in 

 the realm of contemplation : one or two special properties 

 are noted and described, whilst a number of collateral data 

 are for the moment disregarded. In the former case, it 

 is by a process of actual or physical, in the latter by one 



